A Feasibility Study to Evaluate Self-Harm Group in Inpatient Settings

A Feasibility Study to Evaluate Self-Harm Group in Inpatient Settings

The current research is being undertaken as part of a professional doctorate in clinical psychology, which aims to evaluate the feasibility of a group programme to address self-harm within 23 days, to provide evidence for a controlled trial. The intervention will include four group sessions conducted over 2 weeks, based on Dialectical Behavioural Therapy. Specifically the aims are to determine 1) means and a standard deviation for two pre and post treatment outcome measures in order to estimate sample size for the main study, 2) the need for an inpatient intervention for self-harm measured by number of participants eligible and accepting of the treatment, 3) retention of participants for 4 groups given the predicted short stays of patients on wards, and 4) the acceptability of the research process for this client group through feedback.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Participants will be screened by their allocated clinician and included if they are aged between 18-65
• admitted to hospital
• have a history of or engaged in at least one episode of self-harm, iv) have capacity to understand the information sheet.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Participants will be screened by clinicians and they will exclude people if i) they are Non-English speakers (due to translation costs)
• they lack the capacity to give informed consent (assessed by their key clinician)
• their symptoms prevent them from concentrating for an hour at a time (i.e. severe thought disorder), and therefore not benefiting from the group (assessed by their key clinician)