Advance Choice

The Advance Choice team would like to invite you to the launch of AdvanceChoice.Org, an online resource that hosts several explanatory videos, alongside educational information, designed to explain the what, how and why behind Advance Choice Documents.

After the recent Independent Review of the English & Welsh Mental Health Act in 2018, the government came out in support of incorporating Advance Choice Documents, saying that these ‘give individuals the opportunity to record a range of choices and statements about their care and treatment in preparation for a future situation in which they are too unwell to express these decisions themselves.’ AdvanceChoice.org has been designed to offer a way for those living with severe mental illness to start to be able to express these choices.

The team behind this project came together to demystify the process of creating mental health advance requests and instructions, based on a person’s past experience of severe illness, to help them guide future healthcare professionals when they become very unwell and may not be included in all decisions about their care. The series of short films give simple instructions and support to a group of people who often feel that their voice is not heard in decision-making relating to their care and treatment.

As far as we are aware this is the only resource of its kind.

Agenda:

18.15 Opening Remarks

Professor Matthew Hotopf, Executive Dean, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London

18.25 Intro to AdvanceChoice.org, How it works, why it’s needed and example video content

Dr Tania Gergel, Director of Research, Bipolar UK, and Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Division of Psychiatry, University College London

18.45 Panel discussion

Chaired by Leah Charles-King, TV & Radio broadcaster (BiPolar UK ambassador)

• Professor Sally Marlow, Professor of Practice in Public Understanding of Mental Health Research at King's College London. BBC Radio 3 Researcher in Residence, co-founder of Advance Choice
• Dr Thomas Kabir, Senior Researcher, Experimental Psychology & Psychiatry, University of Oxford (via McPin)
• Dr Jacqui Dyer MBE, NHSE’s mental health equalities advisor

19.15 The importance of Advance Choice Documents

Ben Spencer MP and representative of the Joint Committee on the Draft Mental Health Bill

19.30 Drinks & networking