What Helps in 'Self-help'?

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  What Helps in 'Self-help'?: A Borderline Personality Disorder Self-help Group 2016

• IRAS ID

  183495

• Contact name

  Alison Bacon

• Sponsor organisation

  Plymouth University

• Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier

  N/A, N/A

• Duration of Study in the UK

  0 years, 8 months, 31 days

• Research summary

  The aim of this research is to explore group processes in a Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) self-help group (SHG). I will be gathering data from discussions made in a BPD self-help group (of up to 10 participants), researching it as a single case study (small group design) and contributing to building a theory of why self-help groups are helpful and attended by the members and what happens in the group (interactions). This will be in collaboration with the BPD group, its facilitator and the Psychodynamic Psychotherapy lead at Centre Court. The research aims to explore why self-help groups are useful, what happens in a session, what the structure is and what group members gain from attending (seeking companionship, not being alone, wanting to give advice, or receive advice, comparing themselves to others to make themselves feel better and so on). I will be audio recording the group in session and later making reflective notes about non-verbal communication after the session is finished (so as not to disturb the group behaviour). This audio data will be analysed using a qualitative method, such as interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) for transcriptions, which will be supervised by a member of staff at the Plymouth University Psychology Department. Additional data about reasons for attendance and what is gained from attending will be gathered from a questionnaire.
  The development towards a theory of self-help groups built using this data will be of a standard that could be tested by future researchers in other self-help groups, to see if the data gathered from the BPD self-help group generalises across other BPD groups, groups in general and different health conditions. This data would be useful to feedback to group members to reflect upon their behaviour and for facilitators to structure sessions most effectively for member benefits.

• REC name

  South Central - Hampshire A Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  15/SC/0394

• Date of REC Opinion

  25 Jun 2015

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion