Therapeutic Assessment RCT Long-Term Follow Up
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Therapeutic Assessment (TA) of Adolescents Presenting with Self Harm versus Standard Psychosocial Assessment and Risk Management. Randomised Controlled Trial Long-term Follow Up.
IRAS ID
207901
Contact name
Dennis Ougrin
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College London (Research Management)
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
07/H0722/66, RCT with 2 year follow up
Duration of Study in the UK
4 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Self-harm (SH) in young people who come into contact with mental health services in England is currently assessed under an information gathering and risk management framework. The follow up non-attendance (DNA) rate in child psychiatry has been estimated to be up to 70% and therefore the SH assessment appears to be a lost therapeutic opportunity. The ‘TOTAL’ trial was conducted to identify if a novel ‘Therapeutic Assessment’ (TA) method had the potential to improve treatment engagement and presentations to emergency services in adolescents who self-harmed compared to standard care services. A medium-term follow up of this trial demonstrated sustained improvement in treatment engagement in adolescents who received Therapeutic Assessment (TA) versus Assessment As Usual (AAU), following an emergency presentation with self-harm. However, no significant differences in the frequency of self-harm leading to Accident and Emergency presentations were observed between the two assessment procedures over the two year study period. The current study aims to investigate whether these results still apply or if the improved engagement leads to changes in A&E presentations and mortality at 6 and 10 year time points since the initial randomisation.
REC name
East of England - Essex Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/EE/0308
Date of REC Opinion
1 Aug 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion