The Choice of Medication website and Information for Patients with a Learning Disability are great for finding out more about medication used to treat mental illness and learning disability, and provide a fantastic resource for our patients and carers.
As a staff member, you can refer any patients or carers enquiring about their medication to these valuable resources.
The Electronic Medicines Compendium (EMC) allows the user to print a Patient Information Leaflet (PIL) for all mental health and physical health medicines.
The Choice and Medication website gives staff, patients and carers the information that they may want and need to know about medications related to mental ill-health.
The website offers questions and answers on over 110 medicines used in mental health and over 20 mental health conditions. There is also a search facility to allow information about specific medications and conditions to be searched for.
Click here to access the Choice and Medication website, or copy the address below into a web browser if accessing the website outside of the Trust's network:
www.choiceandmedication.org/merseycare
Click on 'Medications' to bring up a drop down menu. Select the medication that you require
Click on ‘Where can I print information about...X…..?’
For a 'User Friendly', patient information leaflet, click on 'Download a handy PIL' Click on the printer icon to print
Alternatively, a search can be done for specific Mental Health conditions. There are 20 mental health conditions listed. By selecting 'depression', the following information will appear:
What is it?, what are the symptoms?, differential diagnoses, causes, alternative treatments, comparing alternative antidepressants, talking therapies , duration of treatment, time to onset, combination treatments, guidelines and where to find more information.
For the manufacturers patient information leaflets on mental health and physical health medicines, click here
The Team have established a link with the University of Birmingham who have a website dedicated to information for patients with a learning disability. Click here for access.