User Participation & Relations
Here, the focus is on the interactions between the users of psychiatry in order to promote the patients' recovery process and strengthen the patients' options for a coherent process. The research is interdisciplinary and close to clinical practice and examines complex clinical interventions such as Safewards, Trauma Informed Access (TBT) and clinical apps.
Research projects
In this study, the four-part risk assessment tool DUNDRUM (Dangerousness, Understanding, Recovery and Urgency Manual) is studied and implemented. DUNDRUM contributes to improving the quality and transparency of decision-making around triage to different security levels, as well as prioritization of admissions and transfers of patients. Furthermore, it assesses care and treatment initiatives, as well as readyness for discharge or transfer to a lower security level.
DUNDRUM-1 triages to which security level is needed for the patient. Whether the patient can be in an outpatient setting or requires hospitalization and in which setting (open, closed, general or specialized forensic psychiatry).
DUNDRUM-2 triages the urgency of the required safety level (DUNDRUM-1). This helps provide a structure for deciding who on a waiting list for admission to a given level of security is the most urgent.
DUNDRUM-3 assesses the "effect" of the care and treatment initiatives that have been initiated within five areas of care and treatment: physical health, mental health, drugs and alcohol, problem behavior and a broad category that includes social, family and work life .
DUNDRUM-4 assesses the degree of (clinical) recovery that the patient has achieved as a result of the care and treatment provided.
In this Ph.D. project a website to support parents of children/young people with suicidal behavior, was developed in collaboration with the Danish Research Institute for Suicide Prevention. The project had a participatory design and parents to offspring/adult children with suicidal behaviour joined a user panel and participated in developing the website’s content and layout. The website provides more formats of psychoeducation. A chat robot, video clips with actors recapturing experiences of real parents providing care for offspring with suicidal behaviour, questions and answers (Q&A) and other information on available resources for support. All sub-studies included in the Ph.D. project were based on qualitative methods and contributed to the construction of the website. A meta-ethnography, which synthesised qualitative studies about relatives’ experiences of providing care for people with suicidal behaviour. Video interviews with parents, where data material was used as manuscripts for actors and to explore how the suicidal event prompted parents to reconstruct their parental identity. Organising and audio recording workshops where parents and researchers developed the website and where data material was used to explore feelings of ownership.
Background:
The healthcare system is facing a significant challenge with the growing shortage of nurses. One of the most impacted areas is the care of elderly patients over the age of 65, who often suffer from multiple concurrent illnesses. This group frequently faces both physical and mental health challenges, making their care complex. There is an increased risk of adverse events, such as medication errors, falls, or incorrect discharges. The shortage of nurses exacerbates these issues, creating a need for solutions that support both patients and healthcare professionals.
Project purpose:
The project aims to improve both nurses' working conditions and patient safety through the development of an intervention that helps nurses identify areas where their efforts have the greatest impact on patient safety. By using specific indicators (SSI), the project will anticipate and prevent risks related to workload and the care of vulnerable patients.
Our approach:
The project is a collaboration between several institutions, including Region Zealand, SDU, and the University College Absalon. We work closely with both healthcare professionals and citizens in Region Zealand to ensure that the solutions we develop are relevant and practical. A key part of the project is gathering knowledge and experiences from those who work closely with elderly, multi-sick patients to develop a solution that creates real value in everyday practice.
How it will help:
The project focuses on improving nurses' work environment and their ability to provide safe care. This will reduce the risk of adverse events for elderly patients while also creating a better work environment for nurses. The outcome is a project that contributes to retaining nurses in their roles and reducing stress and strain in their work.
Goals:
The project aims to develop a prototype for an intervention that can be used to identify risk factors and ensure better care for elderly patients. The solution should help prevent safety breaches while also creating a supportive work environment for nurses.
Background
Innovative co-created and non-pharmacological interventions are needed to support a recovery-oriented practice in acute psychiatric wards. As a part of recovery-oriented psychiatry, we wanted to co-create (patients, staff, researcher) an intervention. The interventions was named the “The wish well” and “The wish island” and consist of repeated meetings where patients are invited to make wishes for general improvement on the ward. Thus they have the possibility to influence domains in an acute psychiatric ward, such as the physical environment, staff team and patient community.
Aim
To contribute with new knowledge on co-creating a sustainable recovery-oriented interventions in an acute psychiatric ward.
Methods
The project was designed as a cooperative inquiry. Data was generated through audio-recorded meetings in inquiry groups at three acute wards and observation of the interventions in practice over 12 months. Further, data about the patient’s experiences of partaking in the meeting were collected through a survey exact with three questions inspired by the elements in CHIME: Connectedness, meaning, and empowerment.
Results
The study will explore the obstacles and facilitators, such as gaining ownership and willingness to change practices based on wishes from patients when co-creating and conducting the intervention seen from the participants’ perspective (inpatients, experts by experience, employees, and leaders).
Conclusion
It is essential to conduct a local co-created process customizing the intervention to the particular ward in collaboration with experts by experience, employees, and leaders.
The project ’Undergraduate Psychiatry’ includes the development, implementation and evaluation of new, innovative psychiatric learning materials for undergraduate medical students at Copenhagen University. In the current curriculum, medical students are first exposed to psychiatry in their final years of medical school. Studies have identified an early interest in psychiatry as a key predictor for later choosing a career within the field. With this study, we hope to spark an early interest in psychiatry amongst undergraduate medical students, and in the long term improve recruitment of doctors to the field.
Students’ knowledge of, experiences with, attitudes to and interest in psychiatry will be explored through online questionnaires before and after exposure to the new learning material.
The new material will be e-learning material developed in close collaboration with medical experts, users with lived experiences and students, with a focus on interactive and engaging elements. It will serve as add-on learning material on selected undergraduate courses. By integrating psychiatric cases and clinical examples into the undergraduate medical curriculum, we wish to accentuate the connections between psychiatry and other medical specialties. We hope that this will contribute to increased interest in and understanding of psychiatry as a medical specialty.
The aim of this qualitative research project is to provide new knowledge about recovery and identity processes in young people who experience psychosis. Via a qualitative literature study and interview-based studies of young people's everyday life experiences, the project explores youth recovery and how recovery can be supported in this period of life. Informants in the study are recruited via OPUS in Roskilde, a two-year outpatient early psychosis intervention. The project is refined by feedback from a reference group of adults with personal experience of psychosis and recovery in their youth. The project focuses on how young people's recovery becomes possible in diverse contexts of youth living. However, recovery experiences during and following enrollment in OPUS is a common feature, as all participants are associated with OPUS and as the length of this intervention and patients´ transitions to subsequent treatment is still up for discussion. The project is associated with the Competence Center for Onset Psychosis, Psychiatry East, and the Clinical Institute at the University of Southern Denmark under main supervisor, associate professor, research leader and nurse Lene Lauge Berring.
Background
The impact of death by suicide is extensive as bereaved by suicide are at increased risk of mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, and suicidality. Grief after suicide can be considered a ‘disenfranchised grief’, as the grieving person is often unable to publicly mourn the loss because of a societal reluctance to discuss death by suicide, which can increase people’s feeling of isolation. Peer-led support are recognized to improve recovery as participants share experiences with others in a similar situation and the support is a space for grieving and belonging. However, peer-led support group can also be a conflicted space that is troublesome to belong to, and it may not be a help for everybody. There is a lack of studies concerning why some drop out of the support groups after a few meetings. A scoping review revealed that only one study has directly investigated reasons to leave a peer-support group, indicating e.g. the facilitators’ skills as essential.
Aim
This study aims to explore the experiences and needs of individuals bereaved by suicide who withdraw from peer-led support, intending to contribute with new knowledge on what hinders participation in peer-led support groups among individuals searching for support. This knowledge is valuable for the NGOs that subsequently can adjust their support activities and to professionals such as nurses who need to guide those bereaved by suicide to suitable available support in civil society on an informed basis.
Methods
A qualitative interview study with 12 – 16 adults who have approached the activities in the National Association for the Bereaved by Suicide (NABS) in Denmark but have withdrawn after one to five meetings. The data will be processed using reflexive thematic analysis.
Child to Adult Transitions (CAT) focuses on the complex challenges faced by young somatic and psychiatric patients when transitioning from pediatric to adult healthcare services. This transition is particularly critical for young people with mental health disorders, as they often experience a significant reduction in treatment support, networks, and follow-up care. A lack of continuity in treatment can worsen existing psychiatric conditions and, in the worst cases, result in decreased quality of life, hospitalizations, or an increased risk of suicide.
Mental health disorders constitute a major part of the disease burden among adolescents and are often accompanied by complex somatic issues such as chronic pain, eating disorders, or neurological challenges. The transition to adult psychiatric or medical departments is often perceived by young people as an abrupt systemic shift, in which treatment culture, accessibility of care, and responsibility distribution changes drastically. For many, this results in a break in their treatment process and a risk of feeling lost in the healthcare system.
The CAT project aims to minimize these risks by developing interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral transition programs. Initiatives include the establishment of transition teams to improve dialogue between child and adolescent psychiatric units and adult psychiatric units for the benefit of the patient, educational workshops for young patients about to transition, and the development of new digital solutions to ensure continuous support during the transition phase.
A key element of the project is the interdisciplinary collaboration between psychiatric and somatic researchers and clinicians in Denmark and Germany, where hospitals, psychiatric clinics, and research teams work closely together to create a more holistic, welcoming, and transparent transition process. Experiences from patients, caregivers, and clinicians are gathered to contribute to international best practices across disciplinary and regional borders to ensure that the voices of young patients are being heard.
By recognizing that transitions in healthcare play a pivotal role in providing effective long-term healthcare, the CAT project contributes to developing new, cohesive, and patient-centered interventions in the transition between somatic and psychiatric departments and in generating valuable new knowledge based on patient experiences.
Introduction
The gap between staff resources and population needs for psychiatric treatment and support, as well as the geographical gap between services delivered in rural areas and in cities is a major challenge for the Danish society as well as globally.
The current project investigates video consultations (VC) in the context of developing a full-scale home-based mental health service for users with severe mental illness (SMI) necessitating multidisciplinary and municipal support. Digital patient reported outcome (PRO) monitoring can strengthen shared decision making in consultations, and is frequently applied for users with SMI, but it is not regularly combined with VC.
TELMA (Telemedical Monitoring Application) is a national IT system that makes it possible to monitor a patients’ health status in their own home. TELMA includes several questionnaires and the option to connect telemedicine devices that can send vital data such as sleep quality or heart rate measurements directly to the app using Bluetooth. A number of affiliated, cross-sectoral teams who monitors the patient’s health status can view the patient’s responses and data. By mapping the needs and preferences of patients and staff along with an initial trial of the application of TELMA-PSYK for home-based treatment in psychiatry, this study will pave the way for the development of fully digital, person-centered, sector integrating home-based treatment.
Objectives
This study aims to explore barriers and opportunities to home-based treatment for users with severe mental illness as seen by stakeholders, staff, management and users in mental health services and municipalities.
Methods
TELMA-PSYK will be examined in a small-scale feasibility study.
Twenty users with SMI and their regional and municipal staff will be invited to participate in the study. A qualitative study based on phenomenological enquiry will capture the respondents’ experiences of VC and their concerns for and opportunities of full-scale home-based mental health service with PRO recording.
Qualitative data will be interviews examining the users’ experience of three months’ home-based service provision, and the corresponding staffs’ experience of the user’s treatment course and the intervention. Qualitative data will be analyzed with reflexive thematic analysis.
Contact
Adresse
Psykiatrien Region Sjælland
Psykiatrisk Forskningsenhed
Bygning 3
Fælledvej 6, 4. sal
4200 Slagelse
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Opdateret mandag den 7. apr. 2025