Mental health and social care with Amy O'Donnell and Kat Jackson

In this episode, Zoe Swithenbank talks to Drs Amy O'Donnell and Kat Jackson about their recent study on how to improve care for people with coexisting heavy drinking and depression. The discuss the theoretical concept of Relational Autonomy and how it influenced their research.

Amy and Kat describe how they set up the research, and in particular the challenges of recruiting participants from groups where your research is not their priority. They also talk about how much work it takes to conduct effective PPI (Patient and Public Involvement) and how important it is to do it well.

They then go through their findings, discussing how they can inform theory and clinical practice:

"A lot of people who we spoke to literally didn't have anybody. They'd been turned away from every formal health and social care service that they needed to access and they also didn't have any family relationships or friendships for various reasons. How are you supposed to get better if you don't have those?"

Original article: Understanding people's experiences of the formal health and social care system for co-occurring heavy alcohol use and depression through the lens of relational autonomy: A qualitative study by Katherine Jackson and colleagues. Published in Addiction (2023)

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