RIGHT FROM THE START: KEEPING YOUR TEETH IN MIND

A resource to improve the oral health of people with psychosis.

RIGHT FROM THE START – KEEPING YOUR TEETH IN MIND is a new resource to improve the oral health of people experiencing psychosis. Created by Dr Jasper Palmier-Claus, Dr David Shiers, Prof Paul French, Dr Louise Laverty and service users and practitioners from Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, the resource aims to equip service users and families with better information and confidence to seek help.

Why do this? People who experience psychosis are at increased risk of experiencing problems with their teeth and gums. For example, they are more likely to have teeth taken out, get fillings and have problems with gum disease. We want to empower and support people to protect against these problems.

What we did: Our group set out to develop a practical leaflet offering information around oral health problems in psychosis and simple ways that people can protect against them. We also wanted to highlight the support that services can offer people around their oral health.

How we did this: Service users and practitioners worked together in deciding what information was helpful and important to include in the resource, and how to present it to people. We ran three workshops and a number of interviews. These were very interactive with lots of informal conversations, use of visual materials, drawing out creative ideas. Service users and staff were therefore instrumental in developing and designing the final resource. In the future, we would like to support mental health services to share this resource with their service users.

For a copy of the RIGHT FROM THE START – KEEPING YOUR TEETH IN MIND leaflet please Click Here