It’s my medication

Mental health, meds and making changes

The 10th October marks both World Homelessness Day and World Mental Health Day, and with both talking about increasing awareness and taking action for change, it’s perfect timing to share our new work about medication and mental health. 

Thanks to people sharing experiences as part of our Cause and Consequence work (which looked at what needs to change in systems and services- click to read more) we started to see just how complicated the medication journey can be, especially when circumstances are changing quickly. 

What are we doing about this?

The Mental Health Action Group (part of Manchester’s Homelessness Partnership) is putting a spotlight on medication, mental health and homelessness so we can find out what changes must happen for each individual to get what they need, when they need it.   As part of this we are thinking about every aspect linked to medication, for example: diagnosis, getting prescriptions, getting meds, managing meds, getting repeat prescriptions, changing meds, and stopping meds.

As a group we’ve already started collecting experiences and ideas (image 1 shows the key themes which are already emerging- including stigma), and we are now getting ready to speak to more people with different experiences. 

We’re going to arrange 5 meet-ups in different places across Greater Manchester for individuals with personal insight of meds and mental ill-health, to tell us about missed opportunities and what needs to happen to make it better for others.   We’re also going to create a couple of questionnaires (one for those of us with personal insight and one for those of us with professional insight) so we share these across GM too.

Then we want to talk to some GP’s and Pharmacy professionals, before bringing everything back to the Mental Health Action Group to sort priorities for change and get a plan for action.  (Image 2 shows our research plan.)

How to get involved?

If you have personal or professional insight of mental ill-health and homelessness, and would like to have your say or get involved, you can:

  • Come along to the Mental Health Action Group, where you can be involved all the way through the meds work we’re doing now.
  • Be a champion by sharing questionnaires (when we’re ready!) across Greater Manchester.
  • Let us know if you’d be interested in taking part in the research meet-ups or questionnaires.

Email tess_tainton@shelter.org.uk for more information

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