Case Study: 16-year-old Female

1. Patient Background
2. Challenge
3. Solution
4. Outcome
5. Testimonial

Patient Background

The patient was a 16-year-old female with mental health issues. She had been referred by a medical professional, due to concern over her mental health and overall well-being.

Challenge

The primary objective was to empower the patient to improve her overall mental health and resulting quality of life. Her current mental health issues were impacting negatively on her day-to-day life. She was struggling with past trauma, grappling with her GCSE studies, finding it difficult to focus and her relationships with friends and family were becoming increasingly strained.

Solution

An important factor in helping the patient overcome her mental health challenges was promoting the importance of ‘activity’ in her life. Using the Help at Hand platform was perfect for this. It enabled the practice’s dedicated social prescriber to identify and review all the potentially relevant community initiatives and activities that could be relevant for the patient. In this particular case, the gym, hockey and dance classes were identified and had the added benefit of also helping with socialisation and forming new relationships.

Helping the patient to get out of the house, also helped avoid common negative behaviours, such as over eating, social isolation and reduced school attendance.

A vital consideration for the social prescriber was also trying to reduce or remove the need for medication.

Whilst medication was used to calm a particularly acute episode, through using the Help at Hand app, the patient has been encouraged to access an array of Health & Wellbeing activities, to maintain a positive mental state.

Six weeks after the initial consultation, it was time to review the patient’s progress. One of the features of the Help at Hand platform is all calls & conversations that occur between the patient and social prescriber are recorded, along with interactions with the activities the patient uses, to accurately document feedback and progress, all in the secure confines of the platform.

This is particularly useful. The social prescriber stated - “Using Patient Manager means we do not clog up the clinical system with detail that is not needed by the GPs”.

Outcome

The social prescriber is delighted with the Help at Hand platform. They state it is so ‘easy to navigate, everything is in one place and it gives a “whole picture” that is “dedicated “ to the patient.’.

The practice has fed back that the Help at Hand platform offers a vital solution that links up all the stakeholders in the social prescribing journey. In this particular case that includes the youth worker, counselling services and the activity partners that are accessed, monitoring the different types of support, signposting to even more available services and linking up with the Mental Health Support group also involved.

Going forward, the practice social prescriber now regularly uses the Help at Hand Patient Manager to record notable achievements by the patient, such as new friendships they have formed or milestones they have achieved.

They use they Help at Hand platform to monitor patient progress longer term, identifying if things have gone quiet from the patient, making follow up calls and sending letters to the assigned youth worker to keep updated on the patient’s developments.

Testimonial