Improving Access to Psychological Therapy on Acute Mental Health Wards

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Improving Access to Psychological Therapy on Acute Mental Health Wards: Intervention Development Study

• IRAS ID

  237989

• Contact name

  Katherine Berry

• Contact email

  katherine.berry@manchester.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  University of Manchester

• Duration of Study in the UK

  1 years, 5 months, 31 days

• Research summary

  Between 2014 and 2015, 103,840 people with severe mental illness spent time as inpatients because they were at risk of harming themselves or others. NICE recommend psychological therapies, like cognitive behaviour therapy, for severe mental illness. People want psychological therapies on inpatient wards, but they are not offered them. Mental Health Trusts prioritise spending money for therapy on outpatient services and ward staff often think that inpatients are ‘too unwell’ to benefit from talking-based treatments like psychological therapy, so don’t refer them. Therapy needs to be delivered differently in inpatient settings compared to the community due to the different nature of the setting and patients' mental states.
  The overall aim of this programme of work is to increase access to psychological therapy on mental health inpatient wards. The first part of this project will work alongside service users and other stakeholders, such as inpatient staff to adapt existing psychological therapy for inpatient settings. We will do this by carrying out reviews of existing literature on inpatient therapies and interviewing patients, their carers and mental health staff about how they think we need to deliver therapy in inpatient settings. As part of this process, we will also pilot different ways of delivering therapy and ask people's opinions about what does and does not work in practice. Finally, we will gather the information from the different sources together and ask experts (including experts by experience) to use this information to help us design an intervention that will improve access to therapy and patient outcomes. The intervention will evaluated in a randomised controlled trial which will form the next stage of this research programme.

• REC name

  North West - Greater Manchester South Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  18/NW/0009

• Date of REC Opinion

  26 Jan 2018

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion