National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health

The National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH) is a collaboration between the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Centre for Outcomes Research and Effectiveness at University College London (UCL). The NCCMH aims to promote the role of evidence synthesis in making informed judgments about healthcare policy. The NCCMH has a history of developing guidelines, conducting systematic reviews and developing implementation guidance for commissioners and service providers. Formed in 2001, on 1 April 2016 a new guideline development centre, the National Guideline Alliance, based at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists took over the clinical guideline programme that had been run by NCCMH.

The NCCMH began producing clinical guidelines for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). It produced the first NICE guideline on schizophrenia, the first guideline on service user experience, and the first guideline in collaboration with the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) on dementia. This work led to further developments in the field of mental health, providing the evidence base that has supported the National Service Framework and the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme for depression and anxiety disorders.

The NICE clinical guideline on schizophrenia, developed by the NCCMH, was twice recognised by the World Health Organization as being the best developed internationally available guideline on that topic. A number of guides have also been translated and adopted or adapted by other healthcare systems, including those of Italy, Australia and Slovenia. The NCCMH has also supported several other countries as part of NICE International, establishing guideline development programmes. Countries included: the Netherlands, working with the WHO collaborating centre Trimbos; Georgia; Turkey; and the USA, working with the American Psychological Association. The NCCMH have also advised on the development of mental health services in South Korea.

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