Background: Acute inpatient stays are decreasing. Evidence for music therapy in mental healthcare exists but practice varies. Short admissions and therapy frequency (usually weekly), limit access, yet acceptability of increased frequency to patients is unknown. Research to model processes and outcomes of intensive provision may identify how best to provide for acute contexts informing clinical practice and future research. Methods: 114 patients admitted to hospital with acute mental health problems were recruited. Patients attended group music therapy 1-3 times per week during admission. Repeated measures assessing patient experiences, session appraisal, motivation and commitment were completed. Questionnaire thematic analysis identified important processes which were coded from session recordings. Multilevel modelling was used to examine associations between music therapy components, session appraisal, motivation, commitment and subsequent attendance. End of therapy interviews with 16 patients explored changes experienced and views on therapy frequency. Results: Attendance was 3 times greater for patients with 3 sessions per week. The majority found increased frequency acceptable and beneficial. Processes of engagement, emotional expression and social connection suggested active music-making, synchrony and singing to be important for group cohesion. Singing was significantly associated with appraisal and motivation. Musical initiation by group members was associated with motivation and commitment. All three outcomes were associated with each other, with session appraisal and increased frequency independently associated with subsequent attendance. Patient attributions for change included creativity, experiential learning and therapist directed reflective discussions. Conclusion: Intensive group music therapy is acceptable to the majority of patients, perceived as beneficial and increases access. Intensive provision is associated with greater engagement and positive experiences, which in turn, are associated with group commitment. Patient experiences can inform practice. Further research should examine effectiveness of intensive provision. Therapists should continue to prioritise engagement through active music-making and singing, and services consider implementation of intensive provision.

No description available.

The present thesis was carried out in part fulfilment of the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. It is presented in portfolio format, comprising of two individual papers although a total thesis abstract provides an overview of the entire thesis. The first paper is a systematic review of existing empirical research. It explores the predictive validity of risk assessment tools for imminent (short-term) violence and aggression in forensic psychiatric settings. The second paper is an empirical study exploring how frontline nursing staff both predict and emotionally cope with experiencing violence and aggression in a high-security setting. Paper one was prepared for Aggression and Violent Behavior and paper two for The International Journal of Forensic Mental Health; so, follow their respective author guidelines. Mental health, and forensic mental health nurses have been identified as being at particular risk of experiencing patient perpetrated violence and aggression (PPVA). There is relatively little research investigating how nursing staff predict and cope with more immediate, imminent inpatient violence and aggression, specifically within secure (forensic) settings. Negative outcomes of PPVA are widely accepted and demonstrated within empirical literature, including increased anxiety and stress for staff, fractures to the therapeutic relationship between patients and staff, and difficulties with staff retention and absenteeism for the organization. Due to the extensive negative outcomes associated with PPVA, a wealth of research has focused on developing the area of violence risk assessment. Despite this, there remains limited understanding regarding the utility of existing risk assessment tools for predicting and assessing violence risk over brief time frames (i.e. days to weeks). Therefore, a systematic review was conducted to explore the predictive validity of violence risk assessment tools for imminent, short-term risk in inpatient forensic psychiatric settings. Findings demonstrated that multiple tools had decent predictive validity, however quality scores were impacted by small sample sizes. The Dynamic Appraisal of Situational Aggression- Inpatient Version was the most effective tool with the highest mean quality score. The main limitations were the small number of studies assessing some of the included tools and the level of ambiguity between studies regarding the definition of imminent, short-term violence. Developing a shared understanding of what constitutes short-term risk and improving the number and quality of studies on the largely neglected tools, should therefore be research priorities. How nurses actually recognize and predict inpatient violence and aggression in forensic psychiatric settings, and how they emotionally cope with the aftermath, are poorly explored and understood processes. A social constructivist grounded theory approach was used to analyze the transcripts from 12 interviews with frontline nursing staff from an inpatient high-security setting. A model was constructed integrating nurses' beliefs and assumptions about subtypes of violence, their efforts to use observation skills in order to aid risk prediction, and their resultant emotional experiences following PPVA. Nurses emotional coping seemed to be affected by several factors relating to the culture of the organization and the accessibility of support. Seemingly, knowing the patient helped nurses to better identify underlying needs leading to violent behavior. This understanding helped nurses to implement targeted, needs-led interventions to address these unmet needs, and so reduce recurrent and cyclical violence. Recommendations are made to build upon, and utilize nursing skills in risk prediction and management, and to help better support the emotional impact of experiencing PPVA within forensic psychiatric settings.

While depression and psychopathy have long been believed to be mutually exclusive traits, a number of MMPI-2 studies have found relatively high correlations between the original Depression and Psychopathic Deviate Scales. This high degree of covariation might be accounted for by the often observed result that all of the basic nine scales of the MMPI-2 are saturated with a general negative affect factor called demoralization. Recently, a series of studies were completed in which this demoralization factor was extracted from the original basic nine scales and they were restructured such that they would each be a more "pure" measure of the clinical dimensions they were intended to assess. These new scales are called the Restructured Clinical (RC) Scales. The major purpose of this study was to examine the items found on the original Depression and Psychopathy Scales for multidimensionality and item overlap, and to compare these scales with their RC counterparts. It was assumed that there would be little if any covariation of the RC Depression and RC Psychopathic Deviate Scales as has been found with the original Depression and Psychopathic Deviate Scales. A factor analysis of the items from each scale was done. Results showed that the original scales indeed had significant item overlap as well as multidimensionality. In addition, the new RC Scales were shown to be much purer in their measurement of their respective constructs. This study provides strong support for the practice of including at least these two scales in the clinical assessment of depression and psychopathy. It would appear that these restructured scales have met the goal of refining the measurement of these two dimensions. / "July 2005." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Psychology.

Bakgrund: Inom psykiatrisk vård är det viktigt att respektera patientens personliga förväntningar och mål för att uppnå goda behandlingsresultat och för att patienterna ska känna sig tillfreds med den vård de erhåller. Sjuksköterskan bör underlätta för patienter att kommunicera om sina besvär, stödja patienten att analysera destruktivt beteende, stödja patienten att skapa en normal daglig livsföring samt främja patientens integritet och egenvård. Trots detta upplever inte patienterna att detta uppfylls alla gånger. Syfte: Syftet med denna litteraturöversikt var att undersöka patienter med psykisk ohälsa med fokus på deras upplevelser av vården på psykiatriska vårdavdelningar.  Metod: I denna litteraturöversikt har författarna använt tio vetenskapliga artiklar för att besvara syftet. Dessa har granskats för att förstå skillnader och likheter och sedan delats in i teman. Resultat: Tre teman och tre underteman påvisades i denna litteraturöversikt. Ett tema var patienters upplevelser av att bli eller inte bli behandlad med respekt med undertemana patienters upplevelser av stigmatisering samt patienters upplevelser av vårdande miljö. Det andra temat var upplevelser av personalens förhållningssätt med undertemat patienters upplevelser av vårdande relationer. Det tredje och sista temat var patienters upplevelser av trygghet. Diskussion: I diskussionen diskuterar författarna patienters upplevelser på psykiatriska vårdavdelningar samt hur dessa påverkar dem. Författarna kom fram till fyra områden; patienters upplevelser av maktlöshet vid stigmatisering, vårdandets och miljöns påverkan på känslor av trygghet, självbestämmandets betydelse samt betydelsen av delaktighet. Dessa områden diskuterades och jämfördes med befintlig forskning och knöts an till Phil Barkers tidvattenmodell. / Background: In psychiatric care, it is important to respect the patients’ personal expectations and goals in order to achieve good treatment outcomes and to make patients feel satisfied with the care. The nurse should help patients to communicate about their inconveniences, support the patient to analyze destructive behaviors, support the patient to create a normal daily life routine and promote patients’ integrity and self-care. However, patients do not experience this in psychiatric care. Aim: The aim of this literature review was to explore patients with mental illness focusing on their experiences of care in psychiatric care units. Method: In this literature review the authors used ten scientific papers to answer the aim of the review. These articles have been examined to understand differences and similarities and then the authors performed a thematic analysis. Results: Three themes and three subthemes were identified in this literature review. The first theme was patients’ experiences of being or not being treated with respect with the associated subthemes patients’ experiences of stigmatization and patients’ experiences of the health care environment. The second theme was the experience of the staff's attitude with the associated subtheme patients’ experiences of caring relationship. The third and last theme was patients’ experiences of safety. Discussion: The authors discussed patients' experiences in psychiatric care units and how these experiences affect the patients. The discussion emphasized four areas; patients experiences of powerlessness in stigmatization, the healthcare’s and the environment's impact on feelings of safety, the importance of self-determination and the importance of participation. These areas were discussed and compared to existing research and also linked to Phil Barker's tidal model.

Background: Psychiatric inpatient staff members work with arguably the most challenging service users. However, reference to these challenges often does not go beyond ‘challenging behaviour’, offering no insight into the actual presentation, thus preventing formulation of the perceived challenges, or subsequent interventions. Moreover, studies have shown that staff responses to challenging presentations can impact on both the staff member and the service user. In particular, staff causal attributions have been shown to impact on their therapeutic response (Apel & Bar-Tal, 1996), as well as being associated with staff emotions (Colson et al., 1987). In turn, the emotional response has been found to be associated with coping, both of which have also been found to effect staff behavioural response, as well as staff members’ psychological well-being (Wykes & Whittington, 1998). However, there have been limited studies assessing these relationships with psychiatric inpatient staff. This may be due to the lack of assessment tools developed for this staff group to measure these particular domains. A specifically designed tool would enable consistent assessment to take place to build on our theoretical knowledge of psychiatric inpatient staff members’ perceived challenges, and their responses to them, as well as highlight specific areas within these domains where further staff training and support is required. Aims: The first aim of the study was to explore psychiatric staff’s views on the challenges they faced when working with service users in inpatient settings, their emotional responses, attributions, and coping strategies about those challenges and then to develop a measure which would accurately capture these (the SEACCS). The second aim was to assess the reliability of the new scale as well as explore relationships within the SEACCS. Finally, the third aim was to assess content and face validity, as well as conduct preliminary psychometric investigations of the construct validity of the newly developed measure. Method: The study was conducted using various methods across three phases. In order to generate items for the SEACCS, a systematic review of the relevant literature and semi-structured interviews took place during the first phase. Secondly, the results of Phase I were combined in order to develop and construct the SEACCS. The third phase involved a postal survey of the SEACCS (including re-test), followed by psychometric investigations to scrutinise the items, explore the reliability, and construct validity of the SEACCS.Results: Twenty three studies were included in the systematic review. The results highlighted inconsistent measurement and findings of the domains concerned. Seven multi-disciplinary staff interviews took place. Thematic analysis was used to conduct four separate analyses focusing on each of the research questions. Several themes and sub-themes were found. Themes such as: ‘Engagement’, ‘Attributions of controllability’, and ‘Behavioural responses’. Findings from the review, thematic analyses, and consultation groups (content and face validity) were combined in order to develop the 64 item SEACCS. A total of 76 multi-disciplinary psychiatric inpatient staff members completed the SEACCS, 15 of which completed re-tests. No items were removed following item scrutiny assessments. Preliminary psychometric investigations indicated good reliability, significant relationships across domains within the SEACCS, and partial construct validity with the GHQ-28.Conclusion: The results of the current study provide the first step in the development and construction of a clinically relevant tool that can be used to assess these domains. The methodological limitations and clinical implications are considered, and future directions for research in this area are suggested.