The Government’s National Director for Mental Health today announced an estimated £1million in grants for new research that will help support the implementation of the Mental Health Bill that is currently going through Parliament.

Professor Louis Appleby gave details of Department of Health Programme Grants that have been awarded through the National Institute for Health Research to two academic research projects.

The first programme will examine a major component of the Mental Health Bill – the community treatment order (Supervised Community Treatment or SCT). The Government wants to introduce SCT to allow more patients to live safely, under supervision, in the community instead of in hospital. SCT will help more patients to rebuild their lives in the community and help to reduce the risk that a minority of patients pose to themselves and the public.

A grant of at least £500,000 will fund a two-and-a-half year study by Oxford University in partnership with Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust. The research team will examine how SCT works in practice, collecting evidence on which patients receive SCT and what the benefits are.
There have been positive reports of Community Treatment Order use from New Zealand, Australia, the US, and Scotland, where the new power was introduced in October 2005.

The second grant of over £500,000 will fund research into reducing inequalities and improving outcomes for black and minority ethnic patients. Over three years, the University of Warwick and Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust will explore ethnic differences in detention rates and to find innovative ways of combating this problem.