With unnecessary human contact being strongly discouraged, Claire Read investigates whether care which is entirely centred on conversation can still be provided in the midst of a global pandemic.
For Katherine Clark, working life has long involved thinking about large, potentially frequent, face-to-face meetings. As trial lead for ODDESSI, she has spent the past couple of years investigating a method of mental healthcare referred to as open dialogue. As the name implies, it involves bringing multiple people together for a conversation.
“Open dialogue is delivered through network meetings,” explains Clark, a senior research associate at University College London. “For every clinical session, you come with anyone that you want to bring to the meeting that’s important to you. So family generally but also friends, neighbours – any people who support you and you want there. Then you’ll also have several open dialogue practitioners in the room, and within the meeting the aim is to facilitate open conversation and discussion.”
Another central tenet is that the meetings should take place at the frequency and over the period of time the patient feels is beneficial. All of which is a very different way of handling mental illness to that traditionally seen in the NHS, and one which the ODDESSI trial – it stands for Open Dialogue: Development and Evaluation of a Social Network Intervention for Severe Mental Illness – has been created to evaluate. The hope is open dialogue could help transform the current model of care for people with major mental ill health.
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