A James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership

Presenters: Howard Ryland, Daniel Whiting, Suzannah Kinsella.

Forensic mental health services cost around 20% of the national mental health budget in England, Scotland and Wales. The consequences of poor care are serious, including reoffending, early rehospitalisation, physical co-morbidities, and premature mortality. Despite this, there is no agreement on the most important research questions.

This project applies the established James Lind Alliance (JLA) Priority Setting Partnership (PSP) methodology to identifying the top ten research priorities in forensic mental health services nationally. This approach, endorsed by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, involves gathering key stakeholders to identify and agree the most important unanswered research questions in a field.

A steering group chaired by an expert JLA advisor, led by Dr Ryland and Dr Whiting, and including patients, carers, clinicians and academics, oversees the project. A survey was circulated to all relevant individuals and organisations, asking them to submit questions they view as important for research to answer. This received 303 responses from individuals, including 100 from patients, with over 900 suggestions for research topics. These topics were catalogued, analysed and summarised into around 50 questions which are about to be launched in a second survey, to ask people for their ranking of these topics, before final prioritisation workshops.

In this webinar we will:

• Describe the process and methodology
• Outline findings so far and the questions being taken into the second survey
• Invite discussion on the topics in the current question longlist
• Discuss the potential uses of the final priority list in 2027 including as a springboard for collaborative research proposals

For more information please visit: https://www.jla.nihr.ac.uk/priority-setting-partnerships/adult-secure-inpatient-and-community-forensic-mental-health-services.