HeadFlex: personalized interventions for pediatric headaches, V2
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Personalised process-based psychological intervention for paediatric headache cases: An idiographic ecological momentary study with weekly feedback provision
IRAS ID
340890
Contact name
Vasilis Vasiliou
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Royal Holloway University of London
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 27 days
Research summary
Summary of Research
This project will be an empirical study as part of a DClinPsy doctoral thesis, completed by one of the researchers.
This project will use a brief and highly personalised psychological intervention for adolescents experiencing headaches. We aim to understand how participants’ real data can guide the personalised intervention that we will provide to adolescents, including learning skills to cope with headaches.
We will first begin with an initial assessment of adolescents’ (n=6-8) headache experiences. We will then formulate a diagram to identify central problem areas, or problematic responses relevant to the adolescents’ headaches. Based on this, we will deliver a brief personalised intervention focused on developing adaptive psychological skills and coping responses to headaches.
The intervention will consist of 4-5 weekly 30-minute 1-to-1 online sessions to address headache-related specific areas of concern, using already known Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) & Acceptance and Commitment (ACT) based psychological interventions. Both interventions have been shown to reduce headache-related disability, and increase functioning.
During data collection, adolescents will be prompted to complete brief online questionnaires using their smartphones. The questionnaires will be personalised and will measure specific psychological processes identified as target areas for each individual. This data collection approach will then be used to analyse the changes for each individual and how these changes facilitate progress in areas identified as important for each adolescent (e.g., school or extracurricular activities). We will also measure whether there is an overall reduction in headache-related disability and improvement in daily life following the intervention’s completion.
Summary of Results
We recruited 5 adolescents aged 14-18 from three NHS paediatric headache clinics. We first met with participants for their intake assessment to understand how their headaches impacted their life, how they coped, and their personal therapy goals. Participants then started baseline data collection, where they were sent frequent questionnaires to assess their functioning. Next, participants took part in five online therapy sessions, lasting 30 minutes each, to work on their particular problem. We continued collecting data from participants during treatment, and for 2 weeks after. To analyse the data, we used graphs to visually map out participants’ progress over time. We found that four participants showed significant change in progress towards their personal goal. Some participants also showed changes in psychological processes related to their headache, as well as improvement in pain-related interference. We also found that the intervention was generally acceptable and feasible and suggest that future research examines changes over a longer period of time with a longer-term intervention.
REC name
South East Scotland REC 02
REC reference
24/SS/0077
Date of REC Opinion
1 Oct 2024
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion