Study Status: Not yet recruiting
Recruit Status: Not yet recruiting
Study Type: Interventional
Official Title: Imaginator: a Pilot of a Brief Functional Imagery Training Intervention for Self-harm in Young People, Supported by a Smart-phone 'App'
Brief Summary:
Self-harm has substantial personal impacts as well as costs on the National Health Service (NHS). Around 13-17% of young people report experiences of self-harm. In Cambridgeshire, this is a significant issue with the number of admissions to hospital for self-harm in young people being higher than the United Kingdom (UK) average. Treating underlying mental illness can lead to a reduction in self-harm, but these are long interventions for complex disorders and many people who self-harm are not under treatment for mental illness. Moreover, young people struggle to access traditional mental health services where these therapies are delivered. No short interventions specifically tailored for young people have been developed so far.
The Imaginator project aims to address the urgent need for an effective and innovative short-term therapy for self-harm in young people. The investigators will pilot a new imagery-based psychological intervention for young people aged 16-25 who experience repetitive self-harm. Mental imagery (the experience of "seeing through the mind's eye") can carry intense emotions (positive and negative), and imagining something can facilitate behaviour. Imagery-based therapies have proven useful (i) for problems that feature intense, hard to manage emotions such as those associated with self-harm, and (ii) for promoting healthy behaviour. Our new intervention called Functional Imagery Training will support young people to imagine more adaptive behaviours to cope with the emotional distress that triggers self-harm, and motivate them to reduce self-harm. Imaginator will comprise of just two sessions followed by phone support over three months.
Moreover, the investigators will address the challenge of young people accessing and staying in therapy by using a smartphone app to support the therapy, as apps