Rebecca Murphy

Dublin City University | DCU · School of Nursing, Psychotherapy and Community Health

Objectives To explore the mental health tribunal experiences of people admitted involuntarily under the Mental Health Act 2001. Methods Employing a qualitative descriptive study design, data were collected from 23 service users who had experienced mental health tribunals during a recent involuntary admission. Face-to-face semi-structured interview...

Emerging from cumulative socio‐political movements forged by persons with self‐experience of mental health difficulties, since the 1970s the practice of peer support has rapidly developed within mental health care. Now revered as a critical component to recovery oriented mental health service, peer support features prominently in international ment...

The narratives of 16 African asylum seekers indicated that the asylum system in Ireland eroded the various sources from which they could derive meaning in life (MIL). The endurance of a protracted asylum process, prohibition from entering the labour force and residence in institutionalized accommodation appeared to erode asylum seekers’ sense of se...

The mental health of asylum seekers has attracted significant interest and examination. Quantitative studies have consistently indicated that asylum seekers experience mental distress at a higher rate than both host populations and their refugee counterparts. Qualitative insight into asylum seekers’ embodied experience of mental distress is limited...

Background Despite a strong evidence base and policy recommendation supporting the implementation of psychoeducation interventions within the mental health system, equitable access for many service users and family members has not been achieved. To enhance translation, developing an evidence-base around the factors that influence implementation of...

Background : Over 70% of the general population have experienced at least one psychologically traumatic event in their lifetime, with 30.5% experiencing four or more events. Recognising the prevalence and potentially injurious effects of psychological trauma among healthcare workers and patients alike is considered important to ensure patient engag...

Purpose People who identify as transgender face stigma, isolation and harassment while often struggling to come to terms with their gender identity. They also disproportionately experience mental health difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to present the voices of transgender people in the Republic of Ireland (RoI) in regard to the issues the...

There is an increasing recognition within the mental health system of the need to design and develop services that are more inclusive of and responsive to all voices and perspectives. Developing culturally inclusive mental health practice and systems requires us to move beyond traditional cultural competence frameworks that focus on knowledge acqui...

Internationally mental distress is more prominent in the LGBTI community than the general population. The LGBTIreland study was set up to take stock of this in the Republic of Ireland. This paper reports on the analysis of the transgender group with reference to minority stress theory and cognitive dissonance theory. An online survey was conducted...

Background Since 2017, PERFORM2Scale, a research consortium with partners from seven countries in Africa and Europe, has steered the implementation and scale-up of a district-level health management strengthening intervention in Ghana, Malawi and Uganda. This article presents PERFORM2Scale’s theory of change (ToC) and reflections upon and adaptatio...

Few studies have explored the problem of engagement in relation to group psychoeducation from a multi-site and multi-stakeholder perspective. The aim of the study was to explore the factors influencing service user and family engagement with group psychoeducation programmes. The study design was qualitative descriptive. Data were collected through...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionately hard impact on refugees and other migrants who are often exposed to the virus with limited means to protect themselves. We tested the hypothesis that during the COVID-19 pandemic, refugees and other migrants have suffered a negative impact on mental health and have been unjustly discrimi...

Ethnic minority populations disproportionately experience mental health difficulties, in addition to inequitable access to and quality of mental health care. In response, Cairde initiated the ‘Developing Mental Health Advocacy and Support for Ethnic Minorities Project’ with the aim of mitigating the inequitable mental health care experiences of eth...

p>While Action Research (AR) in health systems is well established, there is a dearth of research about how its reflection phase is pragmatically employed with time-poor healthcare teams, especially within AR implemented in the Global South. This paper presents the findings of a nested qualitative study within PERFORM2Scale, a 5-year Health Systems...

p>While Action Research (AR) in health systems is well established, there is a dearth of research about how its reflection phase is pragmatically employed with time-poor healthcare teams, especially within AR implemented in the Global South. This paper presents the findings of a nested qualitative study within PERFORM2Scale, a 5-year Health Systems...

Brands are increasingly part of how international aid and development Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) operate, but there are challenges in aligning NGO brand value across diverse stakeholders. This research explores how key decision makers within one major NGO – Oxfam—construct the challenges of brand value alignment, using an Interpretative Ph...

The COVID-19 pandemic is a defining global health crisis of our time. While the impact of COVID-19, including its mental health impact, is increasingly being documented, there remain important gaps regarding the specific consequences of the pandemic on particular population groups, including refugees and migrants. This study aims to uncover the imp...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide first-hand reflective narratives from participants of their involvement in the overall process, with particular reference to the benefits and challenges of engagement. Design/methodology/approach Five participants agreed to write a reflective piece of approximately 500 words on their involvement in t...

The Irish Mental Health Act (2001) is undergoing revision. In 2014 an Expert Review Group recommended that the term currently used in the act “mental disorder”, should be replaced with the term “mental illness”. We argue that the proposed change, while well intentioned, contradicts the internationally adopted terminology of “mental disorder” used b...

We read MacLachlan et al.’s (2021) open letter with considerable interest. The authors scrutinize and set out their case against the replacement of the term ‘mental disorder’ with 'mental illness’ in the new Irish Mental Health Act. We are three UK-based mental health nurse academics, all recently employed at Northumbria University, and have accept...

Accessible Summary What is known on the subject? • PhotoVoice as a participatory methodology has been used within mental health to support marginalized communities in addressing the challenges they encounter. • The PhotoVoice methodology aims to encourage and foster collaborative and equal partnerships. However, reports of previous projects highl...

Aim: To explore the barriers to accessing mental health services in the Republic of Ireland from the perspectives of young LGBT + people aged 14–25. Background: Significant mental health disparities exist between LGBT + young people and their cisgender and heterosexual peers, yet they do not have equitable access to mental health services. Limited...

Background: Psychoeducation provides a range of benefits to service users with severe mental health illness and their family members. A lack of engagement with mental health services may lead to poorer outcomes and increased healthcare costs. Few studies have explored the problem of engagement in relation to group psychoeducation from a multi-site...

Background Despite a strong evidence base and policy recommendation supporting the implementation of psychoeducation interventions within the mental health system, equitable access for many service users and family members has not been achieved. To enhance translation, developing an evidence-base around the factors that influence implementation of...

Background Despite a strong evidence base and policy recommendation supporting the implementation of psychoeducation interventions within the mental health system, equitable access for many service users and family members has not been achieved. To enhance translation, developing an evidence-base around the factors that influence implementation of...

Despite health policy and research increasingly advocating for recovery‐enabling principles to be better integrated into mental health services, finding solutions to enhance the translation of recovery policy into practice remains a challenge. This study sought to understand whether a co‐facilitated group education intervention for service users an...

Background: Despite evidence to support the effectiveness of psychoeducation for people experiencing mental health difficulties and their families, understanding issues around the implementation of such programmes is limited. Aim: The aim of this scoping review was to synthesise the peer-reviewed literature on barriers and enablers influencing the...

Background: Research to support the added value of including Epilepsy Specialist Nurses as members of the multidisciplinary team is developing, yet little information exists on factors influencing the translation of these roles into practice. Aim: To describe the enabling and inhibiting factors to the implementation of the Epilepsy Nurse Special...

This paper explores factors which contribute to happiness among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) individuals as part of the largest study to date of mental health in the LGBTI community in the Republic of Ireland (LGBTIreland study). This mixed methods study informed by minority stress theory, contained an online survey (n =...

Objective: The objective of the study was to explore the experiences of individuals admitted to the hospital involuntarily under the Mental Health Act 2001 in the Republic of Ireland. Methods: In this qualitative descriptive study, 50 individuals who had been involuntarily admitted to a hospital underwent face-to-face semistructured interviews a...

Background: Changing family sociodemographic factors, increased life expectancy for people with an intellectual disability, deinstitutionalization and policy prioritization of the family as the principal care provider, presents new challenges to care sustainability. Method: A qualitative study design was employed, entailing focus groups and semi...

https://www.mentalhealthreform.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Homelessness-and-mental-health-report.pdf.

https://www.mentalhealthireland.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Impact-of-Peer-Led-Mental-Health-Support-in-the-Community.pdf.

Objective: to explore the views and experiences of women with mental health difficulties, in the Republic of Ireland, accessing and receiving care from publicly-funded maternity care services during pregnancy, childbirth and immediate postnatal period in hospital. Participants: in total 20 women with a range of mental health problems were recrui...

Refugee populations are widely regarded as difficult to access for research purposes, often because of specific ethical sensitivities and practical challenges. Hence, research methods must be judiciously chosen and fine-tuned to ensure they are sufficiently sensitive and culturally appropriate. Bicultural Research Assistants, who typically share la...

This paper explores the cross-cultural application of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and the difficulties associated with administration to women from refugee backgrounds. Assessing women's comprehension of individual scale items identified problems associated with "Western" terminology and concepts. Re-interpretation of discrete i...

Indigenous Australians experience significantly disproportionate poorer health outcomes compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts. Despite the recognised importance of maternal infant health (MIH), there is surprisingly little empirical research to guide service redesign that successfully addresses the disparities. This paper reports on a servi...

In response to an identified need, a specialist antenatal clinic for women from refugee backgrounds was introduced in 2008, with an evaluation planned and completed in 2010. Can maternity care experiences for women from refugee backgrounds, attending a specialist antenatal clinic in a tertiary Australian public hospital, be improved? The evaluation...

Background Indigenous Australians are a small, widely dispersed population. Regarding childbearing women and infants, inequities in service delivery and culturally unsafe services contribute to significantly poorer outcomes, with a lack of high-level research to guide service redesign. This paper reports on an Evaluation of a specialist (Murri) ant...