The personal experience of parenting a child with Juvenile Huntington’s Disease: perceptions across Europe

The study reported here presents a detailed description of what it is like to parent a child with juvenile Huntington’s disease in families across four European countries. Its primary aim was to develop and extend findings from a previous UK study. The study recruited parents from four European countries: Holland, Italy, Poland and Sweden,. A secondary aim was to see the extent to which the findings from the UK study were repeated across Europe and the degree of commonality or divergence across the different countries. Fourteen parents who were the primary caregiver took part in a semistructured interview. These were analyzed using an established qualitative methodology, interpretative phenomenological analysis. Five analytic themes were derived from the analysis: the early signs of something wrong; parental understanding of juvenile Huntington’s disease; living with the disease; other people’s knowledge and understanding; and need for support. These are discussed in light of the considerable convergence between the experiences of families in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe

Engaging with arts-based research: A story in three parts

Qualitative psychology researchers of today face numerous practical, ethical, political and theoretical challenges. We have often asked ourselves how we might respond to these multiple and complex challenges. On our evolving research journeys, we have found that arts-based methodologies offer one effective response. We explore here our experiences of doing arts-based research in psychological contexts, by sharing and reflecting on three short stories. The stories illustrate how each arts-based project has required of us three distinct waves of engagement: interdependent engagement with people and place, aesthetic engagement with sense making processes, and emotional engagement with – and of – audiences. We use the story form to evoke each wave of engagement because it allows us to communicate the qualities of that engagement without finalising, foreclosing or restricting the variety of ways arts-based research might be conducted

"Now I know the terrain": phenomenological exploration of CFTs learning on evidence-based practice

Couple and family therapists are rarely the focus of research yet are critical for positive outcomes in therapy. The attempts to integrate evidence-based approaches into the practice of couple and family therapy have been controversial resulting in passionate and at times divisive dialogue. The aims of this research project were to explore what do couple and family therapists experience when learning an evidence-based approach to working with couples and families. A total of 14 couple and family therapists were interviewed about their experience with learning an evidence-based approach. The research was guided methodologically by interpretive phenomenological analysis. Three themes emerged from the participants’ experiences including: the supports and challenges in learning; the embodiment of a therapy practice; and the experience of shame while learning