Jeremy Dixon

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• Doctor of Social Work
• Reader at Cardiff University

The number of detentions under mental health legislation is growing, disproportionately impacting Black men. Previous research into the over-detention of Black people is repetitive and solutions to reduce disparities are ineffective, not enacted, or outdated. This review is original and novel in using a lived experience lens within the Silences fra...

The reduction of hospital deaths is a policy priority in most developed countries. However, health and social care systems experience difficulties in delivering this outcome. Moreover, studies of place of death fail to identify barriers to dying in the community. To address this gap, this study estimates the unique effects of disease diagnosis and...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a record of the early development of thinking and practice associated with adult safeguarding in the UK. Design/methodology/approach Interview. Findings In this interview, Dr Mervyn Eastman speaks about his research and campaigning work. He identifies how he became aware of the scale of older adult...

Background Dementia is a terminal condition often requiring palliative care delivered in residential care settings. While informal caregivers (ICGs) are pivotal in care-based decision-making, they have higher rates of physical and mental illness than ICGs of people with other terminal conditions. Identifying the needs of ICGs of people living with...

The final NIHR report of the research project: Improving the experiences of Black African-Caribbean men detained under the Mental Health Act: a co-produced intervention using the Silences Framework (ImprovE-ACT)

Nearest relatives (NRs) are an important safeguard for people who are affected by the Mental Health Act. The Nearest Relative role is being reviewed as part of the planned reform to the MHA. A project building on recent research has identified that Nearest Relatives lack information and clarity about the role; often experience guilt, isolation and...

Objective: The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has implications for the use of law with people living with dementia. This systematic review identifies current international practice approaches to people living with dementia who are detained under mental capacity or mental health laws. Method: Databases searches of Sc...

Background: Although addiction therapists are faced with immense pressures to effectively support clients through relapses and overdose risks, the evidence base on relapse remains significantly limited. Aims: This study aims to generate novel understandings of substance misuse relapse from a lived experience perspective of addiction therapists. Met...

Eligible relatives are given rights and powers in the compulsory treatment of people with mental health problems in several international jurisdictions, including within England and Wales. However, little attention has been given to whether relatives feel legally literate or competent to fulfil such roles. This article examines this issue through f...

This is the transcript of a Work and Pensions Committee’s inquiry examining how DWP supports vulnerable benefit claimants and whether its approach to safeguarding needs to change. This session focussed on evidence from academics and witnesses involved with the safeguarding of adults at a local level.

This book explores how social workers assess and manage risk and uncertainty when doing adult safeguarding work. The first chapter of the book examines how adult safeguarding came to be seen as an issue needing a policy response. This begins with a discussion of campaigns against the abuse and neglect of older adults in the 1960s. The theoretical f...

Call for Papers for an Edited Collection on Sociological Perspectives of Community Mental Health (to be submitted to Policy Press)

Rich Moth’s book, Understanding Mental Distress, provides a fascinating insight into the operation of community mental health services. The book reports on an ethnographic research project focused on two mental health services, named, ‘Southville Community Mental Health Team’ and the ‘Rehabilitation Recovery Team’. Observations and interviews were...

The ability to form strong relationships is viewed as central to mental health recovery. Few studies have explored the experiences of people with mental health problems in forming or maintaining romantic relationships. Our study addressed this gap through conducting focus groups with ten people with mental health problems, six carers and six profes...

Recent research into the role of mental health social work has identified a need for increased critical engagement with accounts of professional role and identity. Notably, a number of studies have found that social workers struggle to articulate their role within mental health teams and services. This study aimed to identify the ways in which soci...

In this editorial we introduce a special thematic collection of articles which focus on how risk operates, or is conceptualised, at the boundaries of social work practice. The collection includes theoretical, empirical, and practice-oriented articles, each of which critically engages with contemporary debates about risk and social work and its comp...

Relapsing multiple times back into opiate and crack cocaine misuse significantly increases the risk for overdose death, of which rates continue to soar worldwide. This study aims to provide an in‐depth understanding of opiate and crack relapse from the lived experience perspectives of people in recovery from substance misuse. Semi‐structured interv...

Research shows that tensions between family carers and professionals become acute where the issue of compulsory admission to hospital is at stake. In England and Wales, a specific family member is appointed to safeguard the interests of a person assessed under the Mental Health Act 1983. This currently occurs through the Nearest Relative (NR) role....

Background Mental health and mental illness have been contested concepts for decades, with a wide variety of models being proposed. To date, there has been no exhaustive review that provides an overview of existing models. Aim To conduct a quasi-systematic review of theoretical models of mental health problems. Methods We searched academic databa...

Research shows that tensions between family carers and professionals become acute where the issue of compulsory admission to hospital is at stake. In England and Wales, a specific family member is appointed to safeguard the interests of a person assessed under the Mental Health Act 1983. This currently occurs through the Nearest Relative role. The...

Background: Mental health and mental illness have been contested concepts for decades, with a wide variety of models being proposed. To date, there has been no exhaustive review which provides an overview of existing models. Aim: To conduct a quasi-systematic review of theoretical models of mental health problems. Methods: We searched academic da...

Dementia may make adults more susceptible to abuse and neglect and such mistreatment is recognised as a human rights violation. This article focusses on how the rights of people living with dementia might be protected through the use of supported decision-making within safeguarding work. The article begins by reviewing the aims and scope of adult s...

This document is a call for papers for a forthcoming special issue of Health, Risk and Society which will focus on risk at the boundaries of social work to be published in 2022. Please see the full paper for details of the call. Please note: The deadline for abstracts has been extended. Abstracts of up to 800 words are now due by Friday, 19 March...

Drug strategies in the United Kingdom emphasize the notion of recovery, with the concept being central in England, Wales and Scotland. There are however tensions, with recovery being defined differently across jurisdictions. In this study we aim to address this dilemma by critically interrogating how the term recovery is represented, how these pres...

Safeguarding people at risk of abuse or neglect is a core part of social work practice. Whilst much has been written about how child protection social workers should assess and manage such risks, books on adult safeguarding are much sparser in comparison. The third edition of ‘Safeguarding Adults and the Law’ is a welcome addition to work on adult...

Child mental health is a growing concern for policymakers across the global north. Schools have become a key site for mental health interventions, with new programmes aimed at promoting ‘resilience’, through which children may maintain or regain mental health during adversity. As one of the first studies to explore the early impact of intensive men...

Involuntary detention is used internationally to detain and treat people who are deemed to have a mental disorder. In England and Wales, approved mental health professionals (AMHPs) co‐ordinate Mental Health Act assessments which allow for patients to be detained. AMHPs have legal duties to identify, inform and consult with a patient's nearest rela...

Despite increasing attention given to dementia by international governments and policy makers, the focus of end of life care has been on the dying trajectory of malignant disease. People with severe dementia have complex physical and psychological needs, yet the disease is not always recognised as terminal. Advance Care Planning involving people wi...

Social constructionist critiques of psychiatry have primarily focussed on the function of diagnosis for society. Less attention has been paid to the diverse ways that service users and carers have come to construct mental disorder. Social movements led by service users/survivors have worked to contest biomedical models whilst carer groups have camp...

In this article, we review current advocacy services for people with dementia in England and Wales (provided, respectively, under the Mental Capacity Act 2005, the Mental Health Act 1983/2007 and the Care Act 2014) through the lens of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). We examine what a human rights’ ap...

Narratives have been used in both the sociology of health and illness and in criminology to examine how groups of people present themselves in moral terms. This article focuses on the narratives of offenders with mental health problems in England subject to section 37/41 of the Mental Health Act 1983 to examine how they justified offending prior to...

Family Interventions in Psychosis (FIP) have been promoted internationally but have been criticised for being based on western cultural models. This paper reports on a focus group study with 10 Integrated Mental Health Service Managers in Guangzhou, China using thematic analysis. Managers believed FIP might benefit families but identified potential...

The role of nearest relative (NR) is intended as a safeguard in the Mental Health Act 1983 (as amended in 2007) to curb the excesses of professional discretion and protect patients from unwarranted compulsory hospitalisation. It is unique to the mental health compulsory detention process in England and Wales. There are, however, evident tensions in...

Despite the focus given to end of life care by policy makers and governments, there has been a tendency to ignore the complex and psychological needs of a person with dementia. Advance care planning involving people with dementia and their families can provide opportunities to discuss and initiate timely palliative care. Decision making is not one...

Background In most Anglophone nations, policy and law increasingly foster an autonomy-based model, raising issues for large numbers of people who fail to fit the paradigm, and indicating problems in translating practical and theoretical understandings of ‘good death’ to policy. Three exemplar populations are frail older people, people with dementia...

This chapter explores two dominant themes within mental health care today - risk and recovery. Drawing on governmentality theory, the chapter focusses on professional practice in England where there has been an increase in law and policy focussed on risk management since the 1990s. It is argued that public concerns about the perceived risk that peo...

Mentally disordered offenders are a group of service users who experience substantial amounts of control and supervision. This article uses theories of social control to analyse the way in which mechanisms of control are understood by this group. Semi-structured interviews with mentally disordered offenders in England who were subject to a restrict...

Women with a learning disability who experience domestic abuse receive intervention from both social services and the police. Responses from these services have increasingly become focused on notions of risk. This article uses governmentality theory to examine how risk is understood and managed by both services through a focus on policy and practic...

The research found that: • Mentally disordered offenders subject to supervision under section 41 of the Mental Health Act 1983 were generally aware that they were being supervised because they were judged to have posed a danger to others. • They were aware that risk assessments about them existed, and that mental health staff were measuring and...

The ability of social workers to communicate effectively has long been seen as a core skill. Despite this, there has been relatively little research into how communication skills teaching is transferred to practice. This article begins by summarising current knowledge about how communication skills are taught. It then outlines possible difficulties...

Whilst risk assessments have come to assume an increased level of importance in mental health policy and practice in England and Wales since the 1990s, there has been relatively little focus on the way in which service users themselves experience such practices. This thesis examines the views of offenders subject to Ministry of Justice restrictions...

In Britain, there has been an increased emphasis on the use of risk assessments in mental health services over the past 20 years. Mentally disordered offenders subject to Section 41 of the Mental Health Act 1983 (England and Wales) are defined as posing a serious risk of harm to others. They are thus dealt with by forensic mental health services, w...

Service users subject to section 41 of the Mental Health Act 1983 come under the scrutiny of both the mental health and the criminal justice systems. Much of the sociological literature in this area focuses on the growth of risk-related practices in which risk management is arguably displacing more traditional notions of care. Social workers who ar...