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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Aastha Sharma
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal College of Psychiatrists.Aims and method The British Paediatric Surveillance Unit of the UK Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health contacts participating consultant paediatricians each month to survey whether particular rare conditions or events have been seen in their services. This national surveillance of rare paediatric events has allowed a large amount of research into multiple paediatric conditions. In 2009, the Royal College of Psychiatrists established a similar system - the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Surveillance System (CAPSS) - to survey consultant psychiatrists in UK and Ireland. Since many conditions involve mental and physical health features, seven studies have been run using reporting to both systems, with simultaneous surveillance across both paediatricians and psychiatrists. Given the desire by policymakers, commissioners and clinicians for well-integrated physical and mental healthcare ('joined-up working'), and if the surveillance systems were functioning well, the CAPSS Executive expected high rates of parallel reporting of individual patients to the two systems. The current study synthesises the rates of parallel reporting of cases to those two systems. We assimilate rates of parallel reporting across the seven studies using figures that have already been published, and by contacting contributing research groups directly where the relevant figures are not currently published. No new primary data were collected. Results Of the 1211 confirmed cases, 47 (3.9%) were reported by both psychiatrists and paediatricians. No parallel reporting occurred in four of the seven studies. Clinical implications Our findings raise questions about whether joined-up working in mental and physical healthcare is happening in practice. Research into challenges to obtaining comprehensive surveillance will help epidemiologists improve their use of surveillance and control for biases.
Author(s): McWilliams A, Ayyash HF, Nicholls D, Sharma A, Morton M
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: BJPsych Bulletin
Year: 2025
Pages: epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 27/08/2025
Acceptance date: 30/05/2025
Date deposited: 09/09/2025
ISSN (print): 2056-4694
ISSN (electronic): 2056-4708
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1192/bjb.2025.10122
DOI: 10.1192/bjb.2025.10122
Data Access Statement: Data availability is not applicable to this article as no new data were created in this study. Details of the sources of the analysed data are given in the article
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