This page provides tools that can support you to make physical health services more accessible to people who are living with serious mental illness (SMI).
Barriers to good physical health include lack of access to services or activities that people living with serious mental ill health find useful or personally relevant.
Suggested solutions
- Provide reasonable adjustments to support access to services and encourage attendance, such as longer and more flexible appointment times.
Tools to help you
- Developing and putting in place ‘reasonable adjustments’: Working Together in Support. The Royal College of Psychiatrists have examples of where general practice can make reasonable adjustments for people with an SMI.
- ‘What’s Reasonable? Mental illness and disability law in your GP practice’ – Rethink Mental Illness. Guidance for GP practices on making reasonable adjustments for people with an SMI.
- Rethink: 20 years too soon report. Rethink’s report on physical health experiences of people who use mental health services and their carers and families. It sets out challenges and recommendations.
- Five Year Forward View Mental Health Taskforce sets out key themes that emerged from the public engagement findings: prevention, access and quality.
Tagged: serious mental illness (SMI), stolen years