Mind & Body patient and public engagement

The Mind & Body Programme is committed to engaging staff, patients, service users, their families and carers, and the wider communities we serve in the development and implementation of our work.

Patient and public engagement goes beyond communicating information, it is a continuous process of working together to design, develop and deliver, high quality integrated care in a way that best meets the needs of people accessing and delivering services.

Our core aim for engagement is to ensure that local people with lived experience of both mental and physical health issues or those involved in their care are actively engaged in the development and implementation of health and care services related to the work of the Mind & Body Programme. Our approach to engaging people is underpinned by the values of co-production, collaborative working, responsive and transparent dialogue, openness and inclusivity.

We seek engagement in:

our governance and assurance processes,
in setting the strategic direction for the Programme,
in designing how we should proceed with Programme implementation,
and in the business-as-usual caring activities of our partner organisations to better understand and shape what integrated mind and body care looks and feels like for staff, patients, service users, carers and families.

We do this through:

the Mind & Body Expert Advisory Group
wider staff, patient and public engagement events
collaborating with existing initiatives

Here is a collection of stories from some of the patients and service users that we work with:

Penny’s story: Penny shares how the RE-EDIT tool Compass helped her recognise the importance of her own mental wellbeing after beating breast cancer.
Recovering my mental health after cancer: Billie blogs about being diagnosed with blood cancer, the impact on her mental health and why joined up mind & body care is so important.
Watch Shawn’s video about using the 3 Dimensions for Long Term Conditions Service.
Watch Fiona talk about her experience of IMPARTS (the Integrating Mental & Physical healthcare: Research, Training & Services).

The Mind & Body Expert Advisory Group (EAG) was made up of people with lived experience of both mental and physical health illness as either a patient, service user or carer.

The group met quarterly to ensure the views of patients, services users, carers and families shape the focus of Mind & Body Programme projects and implementation strategy.

Members have also co-presented with the Programme at wider engagement events and meetings and participated in education and training including the e-learning and IMPARTS Massive Open Online Course.

The EAG was disbanded in 2023 and a replacement will be announced in due course.

What have we heard?

You have told us that within the UK healthcare system, mental and physical health are often seen as separate entities leading to fragmented care.

Healthcare professionals can be unaware that patients might have multiple co-existing physical and mental health conditions, or they might not feel confident to support all of a patient’s needs, and thus not provide the full treatment required.

Improving the NHS approach to physical and mental healthcare can improve patient outcomes. Over the past year, more than 420 patients, service users, public and staff attended our events to discuss how to improve mind and body care. Much of what we have heard can be grouped into a set of recurring themes:

Sharing patient information more widely with other healthcare professionals and other departments;
Changing approaches to care so that it considers the whole person including biopsychosocial factors and switches from treatment focused to preventative care;
Raising awareness of the relationship between physical and mental health;
Improving partnerships between national and local organisations;
Taking into consideration patients’ preferences so they have an active role in their care which also involves their wider social network.