Perspectives: patient insight
Dr Raj Kumar, GP and mental health lead for Barking and Dagenham Clinical Commissioning Group, explains how a new campaign, developed through market research and patient insight, has improved take up for Talking Therapies in east London
Creating better health outcomes for those with mental health issues is something we all want for our patients. As the mental health lead for Barking and Dagenham CCG it’s something I’m committed to achieving. Along with our neighbouring CCGs in Havering and Redbridge, we have undertaken a lot of work over the last year to improve access to local mental health services. A significant part of our focus has been on growing referrals to Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) across the three boroughs. As well as working with GPs to achieve this, we have engaged with local people who are experiencing mental health issues to co-create a marketing campaign and new name, Talking Therapies, to raise awareness of the support available.
Working closely with a market research and insight company we conducted patient engagement and research to really understand how people who were eligible for the service felt. What was causing them to feel this way, how could we reach them and what did their ideal service look like? As well as reviewing IAPT campaigns across the country we ran co-creation workshops with our target patient groups — young men, older people and BME groups. The results were extremely valuable and fed into every element of our campaign. We found that patients didn’t associate their feelings with having a mental health issue. Instead they focused on what was causing them to feel this way, such as money worries, work stress or trouble sleeping. We also worked with the groups to understand how they talked about how they were feeling. We then built a targeted marketing campaign around this insight and real patient stories to reach those we knew would benefit from using Talking Therapies. The campaign launched during this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week (16–22 May) and was featured across local media.
Knowing GPs were also key in achieving an increase in Talking Therapy referrals I’ve been visiting every practice in my patch to speak to colleagues about the importance of identifying patients who could benefit from support and the benefits of Talking Therapies and cognitive behavioural therapy. We’ve also redesigned the patient pathway to make it easier for GPs to refer patients to the service, and to remind them that this is the primary treatment they should be recommending to eligible patients. We also looked at how people book Talking Therapies appointments, undertaking a mystery shopping exercise and working with staff to make it simple, consistent and less clinical.
As a result of our GP engagement we’ve already seen a large improvement in the number of referrals to the service. To maintain this momentum we’ve been updating our GPs each month on the number of patients they have referred, and highlighting the practices that have shown the greatest improvement.
The Talking Therapies campaign and my visits to practices will continue over the next few months and we hope to see a continued increase in patients using Talking Therapies as a result. To see the campaign website visit mytalkingtherapies.org.uk.
For more information about the Talking Therapies campaign please contact Samantha Brooker, Communications Manager. The campaign was created by NEL CSU in partnership with Resonant.
