NICE is developing a guideline on ’Dual diagnosis: community-based services to meet people’s wider health and social care needs when they have a severe mental illness and misuse substances’.

All registered stakeholders for the above public health guideline are invited to comment on the draft scope.

This consultation will take place between  28 October to 25 November 2014

Please provide all responses to this draft scope using the Stakeholder Comments Form (ensuring all relevant fields are completed, including your organisation's name) and forwarding this by 5pm on Tuesday, 25 November 2014 at the very latest to the following email address: cphdualdiagnosis@nice.org.uk

 Consultation Documents:

Dual diagnosis: draft scope

Dual diagnosis: equality impact assessment

Dual diagnosis: consultation comments form

Points to consider in the consultation:

We are seeking feedback from stakeholders on all areas of the draft scope. We are particularly keen to hear stakeholders’ views on the following issues: 

• The title of the guidance. In particular the use of the term ‘dual diagnosis’.
• The draft scope proposes that for the purpose of this guideline, ‘dual diagnosis’ is defined as a severe mental illness combined with misuse of substances.  Severe mental illness in this guideline refers to a clinical diagnosis of :
  • • schizophrenia, schizotypal and delusional disorders
    • bipolar affective disorder
    • severe depressive episode(s) with or without psychotic episodes
    • specific personality disorder.
  • Is this definition appropriate? If not, why not; and what changes would you make? Please provide information supporting any proposed change to the definition of dual diagnosis.
  • We are also particularly interested in your views concerning whether severe depression should be included.
• The draft scope proposes to focus on people (aged 14 to 25 years) and adults (no upper age limit)?
• The age cut-off for young people has been set at 14 to reflect the small numbers affected   below this age – and the fact that many early intervention services start at age 14. 
• Is this the appropriate cut-off for age?
• If not, what age groups should the guidance focus on instead and why?
• The proposed approach to economic analysis.
• Do you think this scope could be changed to better promote equality of opportunity relating to age, disability, gender, gender identity, ethnicity, religion and belief, sexual orientation or socio-economic status (please see the Equality Impact Assessment)? In answering this question, please include details of:
• Which particular parts of the scope you think affect equality of opportunity?
• Why and how you think equality of opportunity is affected?

The Institute is unable to accept:

• More than one response per stakeholder organisation
• Comments received after the consultation deadline
• Comments that are not on the correct stakeholder comments form
• Confidential information or other material that you would not wish to be made public
• Comments forms with attachments such as research articles, letters or leaflets. If comments forms do have attachments they will be returned without being read. If the stakeholder resubmits the form without attachments, it must be by the consultation deadline 

What will happen to your comments:

• All comments (with the exception of personal, individual comments and late comments) will be sent to the project team at the end of the consultation
• Comments from registered stakeholders will be formally responded to by the NICE project team and posted on the NICE website after the final scope is published.
• No action will be taken upon receipt of personal, individual comments and late comments.
• Please note: The Institute reserves the right to summarise and edit comments received during consultations, or not to publish them at all, where in the reasonableopinion of the Institute, the comments are voluminous, publication would be unlawful or publication would be otherwise inappropriate.