CFT for severe and complex mental health problems

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Exploring the impact of Compassion Focused Therapy on an inpatient unit for women with complex mental health problems

• IRAS ID

  137623

• Contact name

  Paul Gilbert

• Contact email

  p.gilbert@derby.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

• Research summary

  Complex personality difficulties such as borderline personality disorder have a range of problems associated with impulse and emotion regulation. They typically come from hostile and difficult backgrounds where their experience of affiliation support, validation and compassion were low. They also suffer from high levels of internal shame and self-criticism.
  Compassion focused therapy, has been developed for people with high shame and high self-criticism whose problems tend to be chronic, and who find self-warmth and self-acceptance difficult and/or frightening. It provides a rationale and formulation of current behavioural/emotional difficulties and uses several different exercises to develop mindfulness, self-soothing, self-support and nurturance.Compassion focused approaches have now been effectively used for a number of mental health difficulties.
  We aim to explore the impact of Compassion focused therapy in a female inpatient unit for women diagnosed with complex mental health problems, such as personality disorders. Particularly, we will explore if participating in 20 sessions of CFT will significantly reduce depression, anxiety and stress, borderline sympomatology, impulsiveness, self-criticism, shame, distress tolerance, decentring, aggressivenessm, self-harming behaviours and also the number of serious untoward incidents on the ward. To assess this, participants will be invited to complete self-report questionnaires before, after and three months following the intervention. Participants will also be invited to take part in interviews where they will be asked about their experience of the therapy. Staff on the ward will also be invited to focus groups to share their perceptions of change on the service users and the ward environment after the therapy.

• REC name

  East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  14/EM/0033

• Date of REC Opinion

  13 Mar 2014

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion