An investigation of resilience and attachment styles in the context of psychosis

The proposed mixed-methods PhD aims to explore the impact of resilience and attachment styles in people who experience from psychosis. Psychosis can be a distressing mental health condition associated with experiences, such as paranoia and voice-hearing as well difficulties with motivation, social relationships and activities of daily living. The outcomes following an episode of psychosis are varied, with some people making a complete recovery, some experiencing intermittent relapses in symptoms and some experiencing symptoms on an ongoing basis. Within the groups of people who continue to experience relapses or ongoing symptoms, there are also variations in how people cope with or manage the condition. This project will explore the role of psychosocial resilence factors in determining how people cope with psychosis and subsequent clinical outcomes. There is growing consensus that the concept of secure attachment, which is the extent to which people feel valued by significant others, are comfortable depending on other people and are able to form close relationships, may be an important resilience factor to explore in the context of psychosis.

The applicant will recruit people with a diagnosis of psychosis via NHS mental health services and voluntary organisations. The PhD is likely to comprise both qualitative methods, which involve interviewing people indepth about how they cope with psychosis and how experiences in attachment relationships influence their approach to managing symptoms and quantitive methods, which will involve asking people to complere questionnaires or standardised mental health assessments about symptoms, resilience and attachment styles.

Training/techniques to be provided:

- Systematic reviewing and meta analysis
- Clinical interviewing
- Qualitative data analysis
- Multi level statistical modelling
- Public and patient involvement in research