The Digital Accelerator Project was keen to shine a light on the needs of clients with severe mental illness and to explore new ways to address gaps in their care, through digital and other means.
As part of the project we wanted to provide an opportunity for these often voiceless individuals to be heard. We invited them to share their lived experience as well as suggest lessons to be learned and recommendations for future advancements.
We interviewed four clients and captured their insights in the Digital Accelerator: Life Stories Research.
The following were their recommendations for future work:
Improve training for GPs and staff around mental health in general
Improve information at the point of discharge
Question the efficacy of your communications and look at how that can be improved
Always question if client contact is useful and necessary or just plain intrusive
Do not offer online interventions at the expense of in-person initiatives. There is a need for both
Don’t underestimate the power of counselling
Improve access to GPs and Psychologists for patients who need it most
Make sure your gatekeepers have the training and support they need to filter patients/clients appropriately
Respect an individual’s history. It affects the kind of care can that be given and received
Don’t criminalise mental illness; not explicitly, not implicitly
Find what works and work with that
Read the Life Stories research below for more information.
