Healthcare's Dr Ben Hannigan presents at the Third European Festival of Psychiatric Nursing

Dr Ben Hannigan, Reader in Mental Health Nursing, has recently returned from the Third European Festival of Psychiatric Nursing. This took place in Malta between November 6th to 9th, and was organised by Horatio: European Association for Psychiatric Nurses.

Ben presented two papers. The first reported methods and findings from the RiSC study, which has been funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and has synthesised the evidence in the area of risk for young people in mental health hospital. The final report from this study has been peer reviewed and is scheduled for publication in the NIHR journal Health Services and Delivery Research.

The second paper reported findings from two linked studies into changing mental health systems. Individually these have focused on work, service organisation and user experiences in locality-based community mental health teams, and on the establishment and impact of crisis resolution and home treatment services as an alternative to hospital admission. In his presentation Ben drew conclusions from both studies, noting the degree to which the work of nurses and others is shaped by local workplace features and how new types of service can exert powerful, rippling, effects within interconnected systems.

Ben has added a set of slides used at the Horatio Festival to his blog at http://benhannigan.com, from where further information on his research (including green open access papers for free download) can be found.