Does biofeedback practice help to regulate emotions?
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Does biofeedback practice help to regulate emotions in mentally unwell offenders?
IRAS ID
221912
Contact name
Georgina Atkinson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Birmingham
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 5 months, 30 days
Research summary
24 participants (male and female offenders) within a forensic secure hospital will be asked to take part in the research. The Participants diagnosis will range from schizophrenia, bipolar to emotionally unstable personality disorder and they will range in terms of their ages.
All participants will be asked to complete three questionnaires(Difficulties in Emotional Regulation Scale (DERS), BECKS Anxiety Scale) before, half way through and after the biofeedback sessions (pre, mid and post).
Participants will be asked to put the biofeedback sensors on and breathe in sync with the movement of the IoM butterfly wings for 10 minutes. They will be asked to engage in 15 sessions each. It is hoped that over time it will help regulate their breathing and their readings will be saved on the biofeedback computer software.
An A-B-A design will be used to assess whether there is positive change in terms of the offenders’ emotional states and self-regulation skills. The ABA design is a type of experimental design in which participants are first introduced to a baseline condition (A). In the baseline condition, no treatment or experimental variable is introduced. Participants then receive the experimental condition or treatment (B), after which they return to the baseline condition (A). The ABA design allows experimenters to observe behaviour before treatment, during treatment and after treatment.
REC name
West Midlands - Edgbaston Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/WM/0408
Date of REC Opinion
30 Jan 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion