Measuring Restrictiveness in Forensic Psychiatric Care
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Measuring Experiences of Restrictiveness in Secure Forensic Psychiatric Care: Developing a Scale
IRAS ID
220000
Contact name
Birgit Vollm
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Nottingham University
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 7 months, 1 days
Research summary
Forensic psychiatric care aims to treat individuals with a mental disorder who have committed a crime. This is to improve the patients’ mental health and quality of life and to reduce the risk of reoffending in wider society. Patients may live in forensic hospitals for many years, sometimes being unable to leave the hospital grounds. In these setting they undergo treatment to help them recover. However, by virtue of living in one space as an in-patient, it is important to explore how the forensic hospital effects or facilitates the recovery of these patients. Forensic hospitals are often very secure environments that understandably aim to reduce and manage patient risk. However, it is important that these settings do not become too restrictive in a way that prohibits patients from recovering, improving their quality of life and reducing reoffending. In these hospitals patients may not be able to develop intimate relationships, garner occupational skills through employment, exercise a sufficient amount to minimize risk of physical health concerns, or express themselves artistically. Such restrictions on fundamental aspects of human life make recovery for the patients more difficult and frustrate the aims of forensic secure care.
This project aims to explore what patients find restrictive about their care through the use of qualitative focus groups, so as to develop a questionnaire to measure subjective experiences of restrictiveness across many patients in many different hospitals. This questionnaire can then help us understand how what may be restrictive for one individual affects other parts of their life, and most crucially, their process of recovery towards better health.
REC name
East Midlands - Leicester South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/EM/0159
Date of REC Opinion
21 Jun 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion