Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental healthcare and services: results of a UK survey of front-line staff working with people with intellectual disability and/or autism
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Mental health services have changed the way they operate during the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigated the challenges and innovations reported by staff working in services for people with intellectual disability and/or autism in National Health Service (NHS) and non-NHS sectors, and in in-patient and community settings.
Results
Data were drawn from 648 staff who participated in a UK-wide online survey. Issues around infection risk and mitigation were more important to those working in the NHS and in-patient settings. Community staff were more likely to express concern about the practicalities of a rapid shift to remote working and engaging patients remotely. Qualitative data revealed support for maintaining remote staff working and remote service provision post-pandemic.
Clinical implications
Given the current emphasis on community support for people with intellectual disability and/or autism, the focus of research and clinical practice should be the development of accessible and effective models of remote service provision.
Article activity feed
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.01.20178848: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: The original study (Johnson et al. 2020) was approved by the King’s College London Research Ethics Committee (MRA-19/20-18372). Randomization The final coding frame was developed through ongoing discussion between them and with the whole team, and applied independently by the two researchers on 25% of randomly selected participant responses. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources All analyses were conducted using Stata v15 (StataCorp 2017). StataCorpsuggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)To enhance credibility, two researchers (VT and AA) worked in … SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.01.20178848: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: The original study (Johnson et al. 2020) was approved by the King’s College London Research Ethics Committee (MRA-19/20-18372). Randomization The final coding frame was developed through ongoing discussion between them and with the whole team, and applied independently by the two researchers on 25% of randomly selected participant responses. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources All analyses were conducted using Stata v15 (StataCorp 2017). StataCorpsuggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)To enhance credibility, two researchers (VT and AA) worked in parallel to explore the unedited participant responses and identify emerging themes and sub-themes, using Microsoft Excel to organise the data. Microsoft Excelsuggested: (Microsoft Excel, RRID:SCR_016137)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Limitations: This is a secondary analysis of data from a larger survey and shares the limitations of the original study. It presents the perspective of staff who work with service users and, as such, is only one viewpoint, albeit direct, of what have been unprecedented changes. The sample is one of convenience; although the survey was open and respondents were drawn from a number of different sources it may not be representative of all staff working in mental healthcare for people with intellectual and other developmental disabilities. Respondents working in the NHS are over-represented compared with those working in other sectors. The questionnaire, whilst broad and devised by a multi-disciplinary team including experts by experience, was necessarily rapidly developed and it is possible that some important aspects of the pandemic and its impact on mental health services were not covered. Many other professionals important to the mental health care of people with intellectual disabilities and developmental disorders, such as those working in primary care and pharmacists, were not included in the sample. Future work should also aim to increase participation rates of non-white staff groups given what is now known about the impact of COVID-19 on their overall health and their importance as key workers (Patel et al. 2020). Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic has placed great strain on staff providing mental health services. The implications of the pandemic on mental health of staf...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
-
