Welcome to the web-site of the ShIMME project, focused on shared decision making in psychiatric medication management, which is described in the introduction to the site.
The team engaged in the project includes academic researchers, service users, and mental health practitioners, based in Cambridge.
We believe that shared decision making (SDM) has to become an integral part of the recovery journey of individuals and the mental health services that are there to support them.
Psychiatric medication is an important component of what services provide, too important to be left without good enough information, sound understanding and choice by service users who as part of their recovery are attempting to be more in control over their lives.
Furthermore, we believe that sharing their experiential knowledge with the providers they work with would enrich the knowledge and understanding of these practitioners, and could lead to improved collaborative decision making. SDM is becoming rapidly the new key concept and issue of mental health services practice and policy. As such it runs the risk of becoming a lip service slogan, as much as the best future promise.
This project is the first to offer a pilot of an evaluated intervention focused on the process of SDM in psychiatric medication management in the UK.
We will do our best that it will get the thorough and rigorous attention is deserves. So in order to contribute to it becoming a useful tool for all key stakeholders in mental health in the UK and beyond.
Hope you will enjoy browsing around this website; ask us questions and make comments which will add to our collective knowledge.
Lastly our sincerest thanks go out to Dominic Myers and the rest of the Arcus Global team for their essential support in getting this site up and running.
Best wishes,
Shula Ramon
There is a new topic for discussion in the forums for professionals, and for the service users.