Development and evaluation of a brief CFT intervention in trauma.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The development and evaluation of a brief Self-Practice Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) intervention as a precursor to TAU for trauma patients.
IRAS ID
160094
Contact name
Claire Rycroft
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 1 months, 25 days
Research summary
The project will involve adapting and implementing a five-minute daily self-practice compassion-focused intervention and evaluate its impact on psychological and physiological factors associated with trauma. It aims to offer a novel intervention which may facilitate further benefits from trauma-specific therapy. This would be a unique use of self-practice Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) specifically for trauma clients. Previous research has found that many factors can impact on client’s benefitting from therapy, including depression, anxiety and self-criticism. These things also get in the way of being compassionate towards oneself, and this can be a difficulty for people who have experienced traumatic events. Service users have identified that additional support before trauma specific therapy can be useful and this may offer a positive use of time whilst on therapy waiting lists.
Hypotheses:
i. A brief CFT intervention will decrease levels of depression, anxiety, stress and increase baseline Heart Rate Variability.
ii. The compassion focused intervention will increase experiences of self-compassion, social safeness, and reduce levels of self-criticism.
iii. High ‘fear of compassion’ will moderate the impact of the intervention and result in smaller changes in depression, anxiety, stress and post traumatic change.Clients of the Centre for trauma, resilience and growth will be approached to participate in the study. All participants will have experienced trauma for which they are seeking psychological support. The current compassion focused intervention will be offered to participants on the waiting list for trauma specific therapy at the trauma centre. Each participant will be asked to practice the intervention in their own time over a period of three weeks. There will be initial assessments, repeated assessments following the intervention, and repeated assessments pre and post trauma specific therapies engaged in.
REC name
Wales REC 4
REC reference
14/WA/1213
Date of REC Opinion
5 Dec 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion