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Research to throw light on troubled children
RESEARCHERS from Yorkshire are set to lead a £4.5m trial to find the best therapy to help thousands of youngsters who deliberately hurt themselves each year, it was announced today.
The study – the largest into child mental health ever funded in the UK – will work with more than 800 young people and their families in Yorkshire, Manchester and London to establish if a regime of family therapy is effective.
Evidence suggests as many as one in four adolescents hurt themselves in some way, with a total of three per cent suffering serious injuries.
Incidents include cutting, overdoses, hanging, jumping from height and running into traffic intending to end their lives although they can involve more minor episodes including burning with a cigarette or even extreme piercings.
Even relatively minor injuries can hide severe distress and serious intent by vulnerable youngsters in incidents usually triggered by a specific event but with a background of family difficulties, problems with school or friends or ill health.
Prof David Cottrell, Dean of Medicine at Leeds University, who is heading the trial, said: "Currently services use a range of different treatment approaches but we don't have enough evidence to know which is the most effective.
"We know there is a link between self-harm and difficulties in family relationships and communication.
"However, there just isn't enough evidence of the effectiveness of the therapies used to help these young people, though smaller studies have indicated that family therapy could be an effective technique in reducing further episodes of self-harm in adolescents.
"Through this study we'll be looking at whether the 'whole family' approach, which focuses on the relationships, roles and communication patterns between family members, will enable families to work with young people to help them manage crises and emotional situations more effectively.
"It's concerned with what goes on between people, as much as what goes on in someone's head."
Prof Cottrell said he hoped that the results of the seven-year trial would play a key part in developing standardised safe and effective services for young people who self-harmed.
"It's about helping young people to deal with their distress – and giving them the mechanisms for coping in a better way than self-harm," he said.
"Working with young people, one of the things that strikes you is that often at the time people do this they are serious about ending their lives and there is no other way out. Quite soon afterwards many realise it was not the right thing to do. But there is a group who go on to continue to do it and that's the group we are targeting with this research."
He added: "Families are nearly always part of the solution. What we want to find out is if it is helpful to get families involved in a structured way."
Those involved in the trial will be aged 11-17 who have hurt themselves more than once and required hospital admission for their injuries.
Families from Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, Huddersfield, Halifax, York, Manchester and London will be involved in the study. It follows a successful bid by Leeds University and NHS Leeds to the Department of Health-funded National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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