In the last couple of years, we have seen many new, more democratic and engaging ways of delivering reliable health information to hard-pressed mental health professionals. Specialist blogs, developed by people who understand the information needs of health professionals, as well as the subtle complexities of the field, are engaging a wide audience and generating debate. In the late 1990s I helped set up an Oxford University educational programme for mental health professionals. The aim was to introduce people to the basics of evidence-based healthcare; how to find, appraise and act upon research in practice, in such a way that patient care was improved.
At the time, there were only a few sources that we recommended people use to search for reliable research. We found that many searches brought back very few good quality studies: we needed more large-scale randomised trials and well conducted systematic reviews to tell us about the effectiveness and safety of treatments.
Fast-forward 15 years and the research landscape has shifted. Many areas of mental health are now well served with good quality evidence and, although further research is always needed, we should consider ourselves fortunate to have such a significant evidence-base to draw upon.
The problem that most mental health professionals now face is how to keep up to date with a tidal wave of new research. Of course there are excellent initiatives such as the Cochrane Collaboration that publish summaries of the evidence, which are real time-savers, but if a recent systematic review does not exist for your question then you have to look at the primary research and that's often too big an undertaking to contemplate.
It has been estimated that mental health professionals have to read 20 journal articles every day to keep up to date with the latest good quality research in their speciality and we know from surveys that few have the time or the inclination to take on such a demanding task.
Various solutions have been presented for this problem: first came search engines, like Google then major free biomedical databases and, more recently, specialist search engines. Unfortunately, all these systems simply aggravate the problem, because they either generate too much information (Google and PubMed) or they suffer from poor usability (NHS Evidence) making searching for answers a specialist skill.
Added to this is the problem of bias. Evidence-based practice can help us identify and exclude bias from research, but information published by the government, professional bodies, charities and industry all have some degree of spin.
Health blogs have been around for years, but the social media explosion has allowed individuals and small initiatives to reach a far wider audience than was previously possible. Specialist blogs are sprouting up and many of them provide reliable and interesting updates of great relevance to mental health professionals.
Some are aimed at the broad mental health audience (such as my own blog), others provide a researcher's view (such as Eva Alisic's, Dorothy Bishop's or Martin Webber's) and many more provide the view from the frontline of health and social care (eg the Not So Big Society).
These blogs are informal and fun, and it's interesting to note that while the NHS spends millions of pounds each year on major web projects like NHS Evidence, these blogs reach a far wider audience and generate more debate by sticking to basic usability principles; they are simple, accessible and engaging.
André Tomlin is managing director of Minervation Ltd and the driving force behind the Mental Elf
This article is published by Guardian Professional. Join the Healthcare Professionals Network to receive regular emails and exclusive offers.
