What Can be Learnt From a Pilot Project Offering Brief Therapeutic Work to Parents and Infants in a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service?

NCT04273698 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: 18/SW/0020
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 5
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

Can a method of working therapeutically with parents and children (under the age of five) be made use of in a Child and Adolescent Mental Health team, in which this kind of work does not regularly take place? I hope to understand whether this model of work can be helpful to the children and their families and to look at how this method was received by the team. It is hoped that by working with the parents and child together, the families will be able to think about both the child's presenting difficulty, but also the relationship between the parents and their child and how the parents' own experiences and difficulties might impact on the present situation.

Conditions

Infant Mental Health

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• To learn how this method of therapeutic intervention was received by the families involved. The data gathered (in the form of process notes) from the interviews and therapy sessions was analysed using Thematic Analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006).

  The primary aim of this research was to trial an under-fives' service (like that developed at the Tavistock Clinic), in a CAMHS team which had not offered this kind of work specifically before, and to learn about the responses of families. The data gathered (in the form of process notes) from the interviews and therapy sessions was analysed using Thematic Analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006).

  6 months

Secondary Outcomes (2)

• Goal Based Outcomes (GBO) measure

  6 months

• Experience of Service questionnaire

  6 months

Study Arms (1)

Clinical intervention

EXPERIMENTAL

The project involved recruiting families, with children under the age of five years old, who were experiencing one or more difficulties, and these families were offered five therapeutic sessions, based on a psychodynamic parent-infant psychotherapy approach.

Behavioral: Parent-infant psychotherapy

Interventions

Parent-infant psychotherapy BEHAVIORAL

Brief psychoanalytic parent-infant psychotherapy

Clinical intervention

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: Up to 5 Years
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Child (0-17)

You may qualify if:

• The participants in this trial were children under the age of five years old, who had been referred to the CAMHS clinic.
• The child could have been experiencing a range of difficulties, including issues with sleeping, feeding or attachment, which were having an impact on their, or their families, functioning and wellbeing.
• The work involved working with the referred child and their parent(s) or carers

You may not qualify if:

• Families involved in court proceedings
• Families where there were safeguarding concerns
• Families currently experiencing domestic violence
• Families for whom severe parental mental health difficulties were indicated at the point of referral.
• Families who were already been accessing mental health support
• If the child had severe developmental difficulties and would require a specialist service
• Families requiring an interpreter in order to participate, I would have been unable to involve them, owing to the level of complexity this would have added in terms of the communication.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of East London: lead

Study Sites (1)

Shelley Clinic, CAMHS team, Dorset NHS

Bournemouth, BH1 4LB, United Kingdom

Location

Study Officials

• Margaret Lush

  Tavistock and Portman Trust

  STUDY DIRECTOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: NA
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: TREATMENT
• Intervention Model: SINGLE GROUP
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Chief investigator

Model Details: Five families were each offered five parent-child psychotherapy sessions, based on the Tavistock Under-Fives model, and data was gathered and analysed from both the clinical intervention and from interviews and standardised outcome measures.

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: February 13, 2020
• First Posted: February 18, 2020
• Study Start: April 30, 2018
• Primary Completion: October 30, 2018
• Study Completion: October 30, 2018
• Last Updated: February 18, 2020

Record last verified: 2020-02

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will not share

Locations

GB (1)