45 research outputs found
WELLFOCUS PPT – modified positive psychotherapy to improve well-being in psychosis: study protocol for a pilot randomised controlled trial
BACKGROUND: The promotion of well-being is an important goal of recovery oriented mental health services. No structured, evidence-based intervention exists that aims to increase the well-being in people with severe mental illness such as psychosis. Positive psychotherapy (PPT) is a promising intervention for this goal. Standard PPT was adapted for use with people with psychosis in the UK following the Medical Research Council framework for developing and testing complex interventions, resulting in the WELLFOCUS Model describing the intended impact of WELLFOCUS PPT. This study aims to test the WELLFOCUS Model, by piloting the intervention, trial processes, and evaluation strategy. METHODS/DESIGN: This study is a non-blinded pragmatic pilot RCT comparing WELLFOCUS PPT provided as an 11-session group therapy in addition to treatment as usual to treatment as usual alone. Inclusion criteria are adults (aged 18–65 years) with a main diagnosis of psychosis who use mental health services. A target sample of 80 service users with psychosis are recruited from mental health services across the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Participants are randomised in blocks to the intervention and control group. WELLFOCUS PPT is provided to groups by specifically trained and supervised local therapists and members of the research team. Assessments are conducted before randomisation and after the group intervention. The primary outcome measure is well-being assessed by the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale. Secondary outcomes include good feelings, symptom relief, connectedness, hope, self-worth, empowerment, and meaning. Process evaluation using data collected during the group intervention, post-intervention individual interviews and focus groups with participants, and interviews with trial therapists will complement quantitative outcome data. DISCUSSION: This study will provide data on the feasibility of the intervention and identify necessary adaptations. It will allow optimisation of trial processes and inform the evaluation strategy, including sample size calculation, for a future definitive RCT. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN04199273 – WELLFOCUS study: an intervention to improve well-being in people with psychosis, Date registered: 27 March 2013, first participant randomised on 26 April 2013
The Differential Salience of Family and Community Demands and Resources for Family-to-Work Conflict and Facilitation
Urban multiculture and everyday encounters in semi-public, franchised cafe spaces
This paper engages with an emergent literature on multiculture and concepts such as conviviality and negotiation to explore how increasingly ethnically diverse population routinely share and mix in urban places and social spaces. As part of a wider ESRC funded, two-year qualitative study of changing social life and everyday multiculture in different geographical areas of contemporary England, this paper draws on participant observation data from three branches of franchised leisure and consumption café spaces. We pay particular attention to the ways these spaces work as settings of encounter and shared presence between groups often envisaged as separated by ethnic difference. Our findings suggest that corporate spaces which are more often dismissed as commercial, globalized spaces of soulless homogeneity can be locally inflected spaces whose cultural blandness may generate confident familiarity; ethnic mixity; mundane co-presence and inattentive forms of conviviality