The team from our Academic Institute shares some of the latest research and academic activities from staff here at St Patrick’s Mental Health Services (SPMHS).
Our Academic Institute was established in 2022 and proactively works to promote research and to build a strong research culture in SPMHS. It will play a crucial role in exploring how best to deliver and improve mental health treatment and evidence-based practice.
Development of the Academic Institute is a key element of our organisational strategy, The Future in Mind. It has oversight of hospital-based research activity to ensure that the wellbeing and rights of service users, their families and staff, as well as SPMHS’ resources, are safeguarded at all times. It also aims to promote and raise awareness of the importance of research to our service users.
Every quarter, the Academic Institute issues a Research Bulletin, covering the latest research and academic news and developments from our organisation.
Here, we share some of the highlights from the Spring 2024 Research Bulletin.
New Research Strategy developed
A new four-year Research Strategy has been developed in collaboration with a service user and carer-led steering group for the Academic Institute and with input from our Clinical Advisory Group.
Through consultation with staff, service users and carer representatives, five priorities underpinning this Research Strategy have been identified, including to:
- Establish research governance
- Provide clear and supportive pathways to conduct research
- Devise new ways to communicate research
- Develop research partnerships and resources
- Prioritise public and patient involvement in research.
Research governance involves setting out the best practice principles, policies and standards to achieve high quality healthcare research. It covers a wide range of activities around research conducted at SPMHS which include risk assessment from an institutional perspective (such as data protection); site approval; evaluation of insurance; and legal, financial, regulatory, and contractual issues. Enhancing our research governance structures will help ensure closer coordination and reinforcing of our research efforts and delivery of the Research Strategy. The Research Office at the Academic Institute will play a central, multifunctional role in ensuring that research registration, approval and monitoring processes are streamlined; researchers are fully supported; and a full repository, or record, of research is maintained. The development and implementation of a Research Communications Strategy will also help to keep staff informed of research priorities, plans and opportunities, and to enable us to raise awareness of our research activities and achievements.
This new Research Strategy seeks to address both the opportunities and the challenges faced in conducting research and to build on the great strengths and talents of SPMHS staff. By creating a positive culture for service-user led research and with the right supports for researchers, we can continue to make significant contributions to knowledge of and treatment of the people who use our services.
Research presentations delivered at Nursing Symposium
The Nursing Department here in SPMHS held its second annual symposium in December 2023. Taking place in St Patrick’s University Hospital, the Nursing Symposium highlighted nurse-led programme delivery and quality initiatives. Several presentations on research were also shared on the day.
Ailish Kenneally of our Willow Grove Adolescent Unit presented on her study of Irish secondary school students’ views on mental health supports in school. Marie King of our Nursing Department explored mental health nurses’ experiences of the pandemic, and Dr Colman Noctor examined “the cake model” as a tool for mental health assessment.
Dr Toni O’Connor of our Eating Disorders Service won an award for the Nurse Publication of the Year for her paper on transitioning from inpatient to remote day care for treatment for an eating disorder. Amy Leyden of our Nursing Department also won a prize for her poster on implementing a quality care audit by using a metrics system into an outpatient mental health facility in Dublin.
Mental health of migrants explored at conference
The theme of our 2023 Founder’s Day conference focused on the mental health of migrants and refugees. The conference explored migrant and refugee mental health from a broad perspective, both in terms of the needs of migrants and refugees and of the most appropriate responses to those needs. Relevant research in the field of migrant and refugee mental health was presented, and the lived experiences of migrants and refugees in Ireland were shared.
New research articles published
Several members of our staff have published research and academic work in the early months of 2024. Topics covered in these publications include:
- a multifamily group for adolescents with emotion regulation difficulties
- hippocampal subfield development (or an area of brain development) associated with psychotic experiences in young people
- the role of affect (or the experience of feeling and emotion) in the relationship between interpersonal trauma and psychosis
- service user experience of the Homecare service
- Dublin hospital workers' mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic
- targeted interventions for reducing suicide-related behaviour and ideation in adolescents
- parenting interventions, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and homework.
You can see more on these publications here.
Spotlight shared on pharmacy research
In each Research Bulletin, we put a spotlight on a researcher in SPMHS, with Ita Fitzgerald from our Pharmacy Department sharing about her research career and activities in this issue.
Can you tell us about your research career to date?
I first became interested in research during my undergraduate degree in the Royal College of Surgeons. During the summers and in my final year, I worked in the pharmaceutics lab, formulating gels aimed at optimising the delivery of drugs to their target sites. I was interested in experimental research and drug design, but thought working within clinical research might be a more rewarding way of undertaking research. Pursuing a research career in this way would also allow me to continue working as a pharmacist and address research questions that impact real-world practice.
Soon after graduating, I began working in psychiatry and knew it was the area for me. To improve my research skills, I completed a Masters of Science (MSc) degree and then began a PhD. Luckily, I had the opportunity to do both, whilst continuing to work in clinical practice.
Working as both a clinician and researcher has afforded me opportunities to work as part of multi- and inter-disciplinary collaborations and with service users to co-produce impactful research, where everyone’s expertise is valuable. Being a pharmacist-researcher is also a unique position to conduct research from in, as you get a valuable insight on what really matters to service users and to prescribers. Having this lens is helpful when thinking of research questions that address the needs of both groups, as this is what is needed to embed evidence-based practice into routine settings.
What are you currently working on?
My PhD work is based on improving the management of weight gain caused by antipsychotic medications. I am also particularly interested in methods to improve the evidence-based prescribing of psychotropic medications. I have just completed two pieces of work on predicting weight outcomes amongst those prescribed antipsychotics and integrating service user’s lived experience of managing weight gain from antipsychotic treatment into management guidance for clinicians.
I am currently working on a project using an innovative approach to evidence synthesis to address the question of how to implement shared decision-making during antipsychotic treatment choices amongst those experiencing psychosis. This will be important in facilitating the application of shared decision-making in routine healthcare settings, but also in reducing the overprescribing of antipsychotics with a high cardiometabolic side effect profile, both of which are issues for which we urgently need research addressing.
What do you see as a priority for mental health research over the next five years?
I think integrating innovative research methods from the field of implementation science into psychiatric research is going to be an important priority in coming years. Particularly over the last 10 years, there has been a significant increase in evidence-based psychiatric medicine. Interventions and evidence-based practices that are poorly implemented – or not implemented at all – do not produce expected benefits for service users or their families. Take, for example, clozapine, which has been consistently shown to be the best treatment in the management of schizophrenia deemed resistant to standard antipsychotics. However, internationally, rates of clozapine prescribing for this indication are far below recommended levels, despite accumulating evidence demonstrating its superiority. Research in psychiatry now needs to expand to include looking at questions of how we effectively implement evidence-based interventions into practice.
Any tips for staff wishing to engage in research projects?
Being a good clinician is not the same as being a good researcher. Spend time developing research skills and work with others who have experience in research. Knowing how to formulate and answer research questions effectively is skillset that takes time and (a lot of!) effort to learn. Don’t be afraid to be a beginner again!
You can see more from Ita’s own work and other research work produced by our Pharmacy Department in the Research section of our website.
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