Rethink Mental Illness Manchester Group

Recovery is on our Mental Health Wish List for 2010 and is a topic that seemed to generate a lot of conversation and excitement at our Mistletoe and Mental Health event a couple of weeks ago. Going through my email inbox, which I'm a bit behind on, I found an email from Rethink sent in November with news of a new report on recovery. ' Getting back into the world: reflections on lived experiences of recovery ', is what it says - a compilation of interviews with 48 people across England who have personal experience of mental illness. What's really interesting - and positive - about the report is that the interviews, analysis and write up were also done by people who have personal experience of mental illness. I've not had a chance to have a proper read but a quick glance shows that it will be an inspiring, thought provoking and useful report for anyone with an interest in recovery in mental illness.

Although the issue of confidentiality and information sharing hasn't made it onto our Mental Health Wish List it has cropped up several times as a discussion point over the past few months. Rethink recently sent through some guidance on information sharing from the Department of Health. The report, ' Information Sharing and Mental Health ', touches on some of the issues that we've discussed - that service users have a right to access information that impacts on them and that carers often feel that information is withheld from them unnecessarily. The guide is intended mostly for health professionals and is primarily focussed on sharing of information between statutory and non-statutory organisations. So, it doesn't directly address the issues we've been discussing as a group but does give a useful insight into the difficulties that professionals face. However, the guide does reference a report by Rethink for the Department of Health, published in 2004 , ' Pos

At our Christmas party this week we launched our wish list for mental health services in Manchester. We're calling on service users, carers and people who work with us to sign up in support of the wish list. Here's how you can show your support: 1. Follow this link to download the wish list 2. Save it to your computer 3. Add in any comments you have and sign your name (just typing is fine - no need to sign in pen) 4. Email it to me or post it to Ruth Hannan, Manchester Carers Centre, Beswick Row, Manchester M4 4PR At the end of January we'll collect up all the signed wish lists and send them to Manchester City Council, NHS Manchester and Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust. The document I've linked to above is a summary version of the wish list, because we thought that not everyone has the time to read through a 10 page document! If you'd like to read the full wish list, click here to download . We don't claim that the wish list is comprehensive or re