4.2 Russell Razzaque on ODESSI -  "Open Dialogue saves the NHS a huge amount of money"

Send us Fan MailIt's finally here. The results of the ODDESSI trial. In this episode of OpenPODpod, Fiona listens once again to Russell Razzaque, the Clinical Lead of the NIHR funded ODDESSI trial, which stands for "Open Dialogue: Development and Evaluation of a Social Network Intervention for Severe Mental Illness". Russell worked alongside Professor Steve Pilling who was the Chief Investigator. The trial was a large, multi-centre Cluster Randomised Controlled trial that ran from 2017 to 2025 studying the implementation of Open Dialogue in six pilot sites across five NHS Trusts. Outcomes measured were very much aligned with major national NHS priorities:    Moving care from hospital to community    Improving long-term outcomes    Improving preventative careAs Russell said in a June 2026 blog post "If the Finnish results, particularly the improved patient recovery and reduction of service burden and cost, are replicated by ODDESSI, then it will be a landmark finding, and could potentially lead to an implementation programme that accelerates the transformation of mental healthcare towards a model that is more relational, achieves better recovery, better patient experience and is far more cost effective."(edited from www.bacp.co.uk)Peer workers up and down the UK are incredibly excited to hear this episode and read the ODDESSI paper which is being published in The Lancet Psychiatry on August 27th 2026. POD at Central and North West London NHS Foundation TrustFiona Eastmond | LinkedIn