About the Project
Suicide is a severe global health concern, and is exacerbated in people with severe mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorders and schizophrenia. NICE guidelines advocate Cognitive Behavioural Therapies (CBT) which attempt to ameliorate the debilitating effects of mental illnesses. Work from our psychological suicide research group has shown that CBT approaches need to target suicidality directly if they are to reduce suicide risk, and to avoid focusing solely on reducing symptom frequency or severity. However, an important issue to understand is why people with mental illnesses do and do not seek help for suicidal thoughts and behaviours. This understanding will allow us to optimise the appeal of, and engagement with, psychological therapies which address suicidal thoughts and feelings directly.
Patient and Public Involvement is core to this work and a service-user reference group will be set-up at the outset. This PhD project will recruit people with severe mental illnesses.
Following on from a systematic literature review assessing the roles of demographic, clinical and psychological factors in help seeking behaviours for suicidality, three empirical studies are anticipated. The first study will use qualitative methods to build a theory of barriers and facilitators involved in the decision processes underlying therapy take-up and engagement. The second study builds on study 1, and will use Cluster Analytical Techniques to differentiate factors which might promote help seeking from factors which might inhibit help seeking behaviours. The third study will use a multiple baseline case series method with at least two groups of participants to evaluate which factors are best at encouraging people to seek help and to engage with psychological therapies.
This PhD offers training in quantitative, qualitative and inter-disciplinary skills. All supervisors have immense experience in doing research with people with severe mental illnesses who experience suicidal thoughts and acts.
Applicants should hold (or expect to obtain) a minimum upper-second honours degree (or equivalent) in psychology. A Masters qualification at merit or dinstinction level in psychology, clinical psychology or health psychology would be a significant advantage.
References
Awenat, Y. F., Shaw-Núñez, E., Kelly, J., Law, H., Ahmed, S., Welford, M., . . . Gooding, P. A. (2016). A qualitative analysis of the experiences of people with psychosis of a novel cognitive behavioural therapy targeting suicidality. Psychosis.
Bolton, C., Gooding, P., Kapur, N., Barrowclough, C., & Tarrier, N. (2007). Developing psychological perspectives of suicidal behaviour and risk in people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia: We know they kill themselves but do we understand why? Clinical Psychology Review, 27(4), 511-536.
Haddock, G., Davies, L., Evans, E., Emsley, R., Gooding, P., Heaney, L., . . . Awenat, Y. (2016). Investigating the feasibility and acceptability of a cognitive behavioural suicide prevention therapy for people in acute psychiatric wards (the 'INSITE' trial): study protocol for a randomised controlled trial. Trials, 17.
Pratt, D., Tarrier, N., Dunn, G., Awenat, Y., Shaw, J., Ulph, F., & Gooding, P. (2015). Cognitive-behavioural suicide prevention for male prisoners: a pilot randomized controlled trial. Psychological Medicine, 45(16), 3441-3451.
Tarrier, N., Kelly, J., Maqsood, S., Snelson, N., Maxwell, J., Law, H., . . . Gooding, P. A. (2014). The cognitive behavioural prevention of suicide in psychosis: A clinical trial. Schizophrenia Research, 156(2-3), 204-210.