Posted on: 26 April 2023

CNWL held its Think Physical Conference at the Ridgeway Centre in Milton Keynes on Wednesday 26 April.

The theme of the day was No mental health without physical health and was an opportunity for different teams to come together to share best practice ideas.

The first of several fantastic guest speakers was Kate Dale, Physical Health in Mental Health Project Lead in Bradford District Care NHS Trust, who has been working in the field for about 20 years.P1080602.JPG

She talked about the strong link between physical and mental health and how challenging, but important, it is to improve the physical health of people with serious mental health issues.

She advised clinicians to get to know their patients, take an interest in their physical health and treat them just the same as anyone else.

“Our mental health patients want to be treated exactly the same as everyone else,” she said. “They don’t want to go to a mental health gym, they want to go to the gym.”

We then heard from some of our service users about their lived experience.

P1080753.JPG

Dr Lok Raj, Clinical Director for Milton Keynes Mental Health at CNWL, spoke about Diagnostic Overshadowing, which is where a patient’s diagnosis of one condition overshadows what might be a combination of other or additional conditions.

“For example, someone with autism,” he said. “They might be displaying signs of several conditions but there is a tendency to attribute all new behaviours or symptoms to the original autism diagnosis.”

He argued that the health system needs to counter this issue by sticking to three broad principles.

  1. Dignity and equality of access
  2. Working side by side
    1. Co-location
    2. Reciprocal competencies
    3. Joint ownership
  3. Clarity of communication

Martin Mitchelmore is a Fitness Instructor at the Campbell Centre and he was interviewed onstage about the work he does to get service users moving.

“My role is to get people to enjoy exercise,” he said. “I focus on the things people can do rather than what they can’t do. People sometimes see me on the ward in a tracksuit and think ‘oh no’.

“But by building up people’s confidence, we can work up to a full programme of exercises.

“You can always adapt exercises according to the patient so they enjoy it. Anyone can use the gym and once they see the fitness improving, you can see their confidence improving massively.”

P1080635.JPG

CNWL’s Rosie Lever then spoke about recognising the deteriorating patient and when to escalate.

After lunch, staff from the Milton Keynes Recovery and Wellbeing College spoke about the link between mental health recovery and physical health.

P1080770.JPG

Before the session finished, attendees were invited to take part in a number of physical activities themselves, including Pilates, a local walk, and stretching.

Check out some of the photos of the day!

  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide
  • slide