Co-morbidity and cannabis use in a mental health trust in South East England.

AIM: The prevalence of co-morbidity (severe mental illness and substance) may be less in rural and semi-rural areas than inner cities. The aims were therefore to measure the prevalence of co-morbidity among patients of attending a mental health service in a semi-rural area South East England. DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS: Cross-sectional prevalence survey of 1,808 patients with detailed assessments from a representative sample of 373 patients identified as having a combination of severe mental illness and substance misuse. Interviews with key workers were performed using validated methods from the COSMIC study. RESULTS: The response rates equalled or exceeded 90% for the various parts of the study. One-tenth of patients attending the Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs) reported problematic use of illicit drugs and 17% reported alcohol problems in the past year. 22% of Community Drug and Alcohol Service (CDAS) clients reported a severe mental illness and 46% reported some other form of psychiatric disorder. Of patients with a combined diagnosis of mental illness and substance misuse, cannabis use was 4-fold more common amongst patients attending the CMHT than CDAS (33% vs. 8%) while use of amphetamine was five-fold higher in the CMHT group (10% vs. 2%). Patients with concurrent psychiatric and substance misuse problems represent a similar proportion of the aggregate caseload of both treatment services with observed prevalence amongst the CDAS and CMHT patients with a diagnosis for anxiety disorder (18% vs. 26%), minor depression (42% vs. 32%), personality disorders (32% vs. 36%), histories of self-harm (52% vs. 46%) and violence (33% vs. 30%) respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Co-morbidity is common in clients amongst CMHT and CDAS clients although use of cannabis was significantly more common in CMHT clients than in CDAS clients.

Nurse prescribing in addiction services: client benefits.

Recent changes to prescribing regulations mean that nurse independent prescribers and supplementary prescribers are now able to prescribe any licensed medicine for conditions within their competence, including some controlled drugs. This article discusses the anticipated benefits of these prescribing changes for patients receiving treatment for substance misuse.

Variations in prison mental health services in England and Wales.

In responding to high levels of psychiatric morbidity amongst prisoners and recognising earlier poor quality prison mental health care, prison mental health in-reach teams have been established in England and Wales over the last decade. They are mostly provided by the National Health Service (NHS), which provides the majority of UK healthcare services. Over the same period, the prison population has grown to record levels, such that prisons in England and Wales now contain almost 90,000 of the world's overall prison population of over 10 million people (roughly the size of Paris or Istanbul). This study provides an overview of mental health in-reach services in prisons in England and Wales, including variations between them, through a telephone survey of senior staff in all prisons and young offender institutions in England and Wales. 73% of prisons took part; of them 13% had no in-reach team at all (usually low security establishments) and the majority of services were run by NHS teams, usually according to a generic community mental health team (CMHT) model rather than other specialist models. Team size was unrelated to prison size. Each nurse covered around 500 prisoners, each doctor over 3700. Many provided few or no healthcare cells and 24-h psychiatric cover (including on-call cover) was uncommon. Despite developments in recent years, mental health in-reach services still fall short of community equivalence and there is wide variation in service arrangements that cannot be explained by prison size or function. The aim of community equivalence has not yet been reached in prison healthcare and a more sophisticated measure of service improvement and standardisation would now be useful to drive and monitor future development.