Publish date: 30 November 2023
Congratulations to Trust doctor, Helen Lashwood, whose essay on providing better mental health support for asylum seekers has won a Royal College of Psychiatrists Award.
Helen works in the Hounslow Crisis Assessment Team (HCATT) as an F2 doctor and is involved in prescribing medication for patients as well as helping to facilitate their discharge.
She is the winner of the Royal College's London Division, Psychiatry Annual Essay Prize, which is open to medical students and foundation doctors.
Describing her essay, she said: "Hounslow has a handful of hotels that are designated by the Home Office to house asylum seekers, and HCATT can get referrals from the staff at these hotels when they are concerned about a resident’s mental health.
"Since I started working with HCATT I was intrigued by the discussion created in MDT meetings around service users who were housed in these hotels, as it seemed there were many added complexities to providing care to this population.
"I therefore chose to do a service evaluation to see what proportion of our caseload this population made up, and I was surprised to find there were fewer asylum seekers in our caseload than I originally perceived.
"I also reviewed these patients’ notes to see what barriers we were facing to providing care and if there were any ways in which we might be able to support asylum seekers better."
Helen said the competition has opened her eyes to some of the challenges facing asylum seekers in this country.
She explained: "I’m so glad the Royal College offer this opportunity and that Mandy (our medical education manager) drew my attention to this essay prize as I learned so much just from entering. Performing this service evaluation and writing it up taught me so much about the specific challenges faced by asylum seekers when they encounter mental health services that I hadn’t been aware of before.
"I have entered similar competitions before and not won them, but have never regretted entering as they often push you to try something new. I was really pleased to win on this occasion and have been struck by how many people have reached out to me to offer to help me take my work further and possibly submit it for publication."
Helen is now coming to the end of her rotation as a Trust doctor, but said: "I'm so thankful for the time I've had here and especially for the wonderfully supportive, friendly and approachable HCATT team. Hopefully I'll come back one day!"
