Shared Decision Making in the Psychiatric Inpatient Setting: An Ethnographic Study about Interprofessional Psychiatric Consultations

Person-Centred Decision-Making in Mental Health: A Scoping Review

Person-centred decision-making approaches in mental health care are crucial to safeguard the autonomy of the person. The use of these approaches, however, has not been fully explored beyond the clinical and policy aspects of shared and supported decision-making. The main goal is to identify and collate studies that have made an essential contribution to the understanding of shared, supported, and other decision-making approaches related to adult mental health care, and how person-centred decision-making approaches could be applied in clinical practice. A scoping review of peer-reviewed primary research was undertaken. A preliminary search and a main search were undertaken. For the main search, eight databases were explored in two rounds, between October and November 2022, and in September 2023, limited to primary research in English, Spanish or Portuguese published from October 2012 to August 2023. From a total of 12,285 studies retrieved, 21 studies were included. These research articles, which had mixed quality ratings, focused on therapeutic relationships and communication in decision-making (30%), patients' involvement in treatment decision-making (40%), and interventions for improving patients' decision-making engagement (30%). While there is promising evidence for shared decision-making in mental health care, it is important that healthcare providers use their communicational skills to enhance the therapeutic relationship and engage patients in the process. More high-quality research on supported decision-making strategies and their implementation in mental health services is also required.

Mental health professionals' perspectives regarding how recovery is conceptualized in Singapore: a constructivist grounded theory study

BACKGROUND

Mental health recovery has shifted from clinical conceptualizations to more personal ones. However, much of the lived experience literature has focused on people living with mental health conditions, and less attention has been placed on various mental health professionals, especially in Asian countries, where the personal recovery literature base is in its nascent stage.

AIM

We sought to contribute to a growing body of work by exploring recovery from the lens of different mental health professionals in Singapore.

METHODS

Mental health professionals in Singapore were invited to participate in an online interview through social media. The recordings were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using a constructive grounded theory approach.

RESULTS

Nineteen participants were interviewed. A single core category, "living in society once more", and three categories, "An ongoing process", "Regaining ability to function in society", and "A normality report card" were identified from our data.

CONCLUSIONS

Recovery within the Singapore mental health professional perspective focuses on helping individuals return to society and function productively while considering existing societal norms such as the highly competitive and pragmatic culture in Singapore. Future research can explore in greater depth the impact of these factors on the recovery process.