Clifton, Abigail, Burgess, Caroline, Clement, Sarah, Ohlsen, Ruth, Ramluggun, Pras, Sturt, Jackie, Walters, Paul and Barley, Elizabeth ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9955-0384 (2016) Influences on uptake of cancer screening in mental health service users: a qualitative study. BMC Health Services Research, 16 (257). ISSN 1472-6963

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Abstract

Background
Cancers are a leading cause of death worldwide. People with mental illness are 30 % more likely to die from cancer than the general population. One reason for this may be low uptake of nationally offered cancer screening tests by people with mental illness. We aimed to identify barriers and facilitators for breast, cervical and bowel cancer screening uptake by people with mental illness in order to inform interventions to promote equal access.

Methods
The interview study was conducted in both urban and rural settings. The study was informed by the Theoretical Domains Framework, using framework analysis and triangulation across participant groups. Participants included 45 mental health service users (service users) eligible for cancer screening, 29 mental health professionals and 11 professionals involved in cancer screening.

Results
Themes emerging from the data that affected uptake included knowledge of screening programmes by both service users and healthcare providers; knowledge of, and attitudes towards, mental illness; health service-delivery factors; service users’ beliefs and concerns about cancer screening, and practical issues. These are relevant to different stages of the screening process. Service users do not receive invitations to screening or cancer testing kits if they are admitted to hospital. They are not routinely invited for screening if they are not registered with a general practitioner (GP). Lack of integrated care means that mental health staff do not know if someone is overdue for a test and cancer screening is often not considered during health promotion. Barriers including information processing problems, the extent to which the screening process aggravates symptoms, poor staff client relationships and travel difficulties vary between individuals. Screening professionals are motivated to help, but may lack time or training to manage mental health needs. Reactive measures are available, but service users must request help which they may find difficult.

Conclusions
There are specific barriers to cancer screening uptake for mental health service users that prevent equality of care. Interventions that can be personalised are needed at individual, policy and service-delivery levels. Primary and secondary care staff and policy-makers should work together to develop an integrated approach to cancer screening in this population.

Item Type:	Article
Identifier:	10.1186/s12913-016-1505-4
Additional Information:	This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Keywords:	Mental health, Preventative medicine, Public health, Qualitative research, Cancer screening, Breast, Cervical, Bowel
Subjects:	Medicine and health > Mental health Medicine and health > Nursing Medicine and health > Primary health
Depositing User:	Elizabeth Barley
Date Deposited:	18 Jul 2016 10:51
Last Modified:	04 Nov 2024 12:16
URI:	https://repository.uwl.ac.uk/id/eprint/2784

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