Experience of parents and carers in a DBT skills group

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Pilot study exploring parents’ and carers’ experiences of a parent and carer skills group run in a National and Specialist CAMHS Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) service

  • IRAS ID

    138895

  • Contact name

    Ivan Eisler

  • Contact email

    i.eisler@iop.kcl.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    King's College London

  • Research summary

    The Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) service at Michael Rutter Centre offers a one year treatment programme for adolescents with a history of self-harming and emotional regulation difficulties. The programme runs individual sessions and skills groups for young people and a skills group for parents and carers.

    There is a developing evidence base for the DBT treatment model in treating self-harm and suicidality in adolescents, but there are few studies which investigate individual treatment components of the approach and a lack of studies exploring the experiences of parents and carers. This pilot study aims to shed light on this area by exploring participants’ experiences of the parents and carers DBT skills group.

    Parents and carers who have completed the group will be invited to attend an interview lasting 45-60 minutes. The interviews will be carried out following a semi-structured interview schedule and aim to elicit parent and carer experiences of the group. These will be analysed using thematic analysis which will draw connecting themes from the different accounts. Between five to ten participants will be interviewed.

    The qualitative analysis will be complemented by a small scale pilot analysis of self-report measures of parental well-being, family communication and family functioning taken at the start, middle and end of the group.

    This study aims to generate hypotheses for future research, it is also hoped that the results will used to further develop the group and inform service development

  • REC name

    London - Brighton & Sussex Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    14/LO/0545

  • Date of REC Opinion

    12 May 2014

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion