Niamh Dhondt, Anne M. Doherty
The June 2026 issue of the Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine (hereafter the Journal) includes research spanning a wide breadth of topics, with subthemes providing insights into a range of questions which have a direct impact on the delivery of mental healthcare in Ireland. These include the integration of evidence-based psychotherapies into routine mental healthcare, the physical healthcare of people prescribed clozapine, strategies to address suicidality in university students, and an expert-led overview of the role of nutrition in mental health care.
In community mental health services, interventions that can be delivered by non-specialists can be particularly resource-effective. In this issue, key papers address interventions both within community psychiatric teams and counselling services to address issues of transdiagnostic concern, including mentalising difficulties, suicidal ideation, and physical health monitoring.
The high demand for accessible psychological therapies has been widely observed, but resource constraints and, in particular, the need for specialist staff with specific expertise present challenges to implementing established treatments. Doyle and colleagues use mixed methods to explore the implementation of an introductory mentalisation-based treatment group (MBTi) in two community services (Doyle et al. Reference Doyle, Collins, Wheeler, McAndrew, Burgess, Byrne, OKeeffe and Naughton2025). This transdiagnostic intervention, delivered online by non-specialist staff, resulted in improved responses on quality-of-life measures, reflective capacity assessments, and global measures of distress. In the qualitative interviews, participants generally experienced the intervention as a starting point, consistent with the introductory pitching. With limited policy appetite for increasing access to psychotherapy, this work supports MBTi as having promising potential for community mental health services.
Concerns about how higher education institutions manage suicide risk are an ongoing topic of discussion in both psychiatry and our universities. In this issue, Phillips and colleagues used a mixed-methods approach to explore the experiences of staff in higher education counselling services implementing the Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS) framework (Phillips et al. Reference Phillips, O’Brien, O’Connell, Cully, Walsh and Griffin2025). The majority of participating counsellors, psychotherapists and psychologists from at least 14 higher education institutions found the CAMS framework beneficial, and reported high confidence around assessing and developing safety plans with patients reporting suicidal ideation. Qualitative interviews highlighted that CAMS supports the use of practical, direct language in assessments while also providing a sense of containment. As in mental health services more broadly, most participants found that systemic issues with resources meant that implementing the full model (a 12-session protocol) was not always possible, and additional training on adapting CAMS to real-world, resource-constrained practice would be desirable.
Physical health monitoring has become a recurrent topic in Irish psychiatry with plenary sessions at both the Spring and Winter Conferences of the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland last year, and has been widely discussed in the context of the position paper on physical health. O’Donoghue and colleagues assessed patients attending a clozapine clinic and established that a third met criteria for metabolic syndrome in the preceding year, with nearly two-thirds met the criteria for obesity (O’Donoghue et al. Reference O’Donoghue, Fahy, Tummon, McDonald and Hallahan2025). More than two-thirds of participants described their diet as healthy, despite less than a quarter reporting they consumed more than five portions of fruit and vegetables on a regular basis. Just over half of participants reported engaging in an average of 2.5 hours of moderate-intensity activity per week, and just over a third reported being current smokers. Patient attitudes towards physical health monitoring were overall favourable. Fewer than one in five patients reported familiarity with the term “metabolic syndrome” and fewer than one in ten felt they understood what it meant. Patients had a positive perception of monthly monitoring, and the proposed utility of clozapine monitoring services in providing physical health interventions is worth considering in light of recently revised guidance on clozapine monitoring frequency. A related topic in the area of physical health monitoring in severe mental illness is covered in the perspective piece by Carrington et al., where they discuss the role of metformin in managing antipsychotic-induced weight gain and advocate for it to be offered to all people taking antipsychotic treatment (Carrington et al. Reference Carrington, Keating, Norton, Lyne, Siskind, OShea and ODonoghue2025).
Finally, Dinan outlines the importance of considering nutrition alongside other evidence-based treatments for mood disorders (Dinan Reference Dinan2026). This invited editorial explores the evidence base for nutrition-based approaches and makes a compelling argument for broadening the focus on nutrition beyond the management of weight gain and metabolic syndrome in people receiving antipsychotic medications. This is the first of a series of editorials in which we invite leading researchers to outline a key area of clinically relevant research expertise.
