Parallel Parent Work in Child Psychotherapy: A Narrative Inquiry (1)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A psychoanalytically informed narrative inquiry into the experience of parents, with mental health difficulties, who have parallel parent work while their child attends Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services for child psychotherapy.
IRAS ID
273289
Contact name
Nicola Sacha Gauld ( nee Hale)
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Robert Gordon University
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
SHS/20/14, Robert Gordon University SRRG reference
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 0 days
Research summary
Research Summary
This research, carried out in a child and adolescent mental health service setting, will aim to give voice to parents' experiences of the parent work which is delivered in parallel when their child comes for child psychotherapy. The particular group of parents whose experiences are sought are those who have mental health difficulties themselves, (or in the case of a kinship carer being the person bringing the child to psychotherapy and attending parent work in loco parentis, then mental health difficulties impacting within the family) . This research will be carried out within a service specialising in work with this population, families affected by severe and enduring mental health difficulties.The data collection will be derived primarily from interviews which are structured in such a way as to seek a structured yet informal, even conversational style of data gathering, placing the parents' or carers' experience, as told by them, at the heart of the inquiry.
Summary of Results
The study presented narrative accounts of the parent work undertaken separately, but alongside child psychotherapy interventions in a specialist CAMHS for families impacted by severe and enduring mental health difficulties. Parental experiences of this work were identified as significant gap in the literature review, and the study began to address this knowledge gap, by generating original accounts of this work with a sample of three parents and carers: One parent with severe anxiety and depression, one with complex post traumatic stress disorder, and one grandparental kinship carer whose daughter had had the severe mental health difficulties leading to her having kinship guardianship. Themes were identified within each of the individual narrative accounts before overriding themes linking all three narratives were identified as follows: The distressing mental impact and trauma of waiting for the assessment and support of the specialist service; vagueness about and difficulty remembering how the work was originally set up and what the parameters of that work would be, disconnection and discomfort linked with long periods between meetings where the child's work was reviewed, anxiety and loss linked to changes of worker, the gradual building up of trust in the parent worker, appreciation of support managing strong emotion and distress in the work, greater reflective capacity being learned during the work, and non-judgemental , compassionate attitudes being highly valued by the parents. Parent participants were often reluctant to openly share negative feelings about the service, but when they did they focused on practical issues such as access to clinics being difficult and the lack of welcoming facilities on arrival, but also a feeling about lack of clarity about aims and goals in the work. Participants engaged enthusiastically in this research which positioned them as active participants in the process of research. This was the first study to generate directly with parental experiences of this work and a recommendation is made for further participatory research to continue to bridge this knowledge gap.
REC name
West of Scotland REC 3
REC reference
20/WS/0152
Date of REC Opinion
5 Jan 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion