A Feasibility Study to Evaluate Self-Harm Group in Inpatient Settings

The current research is being undertaken as part of a professional doctorate in clinical psychology, which aims to evaluate the feasibility of a group programme to address self-harm within 23 days, to provide evidence for a controlled trial. The intervention will include four group sessions conducted over 2 weeks, based on Dialectical Behavioural Therapy. Specifically the aims are to determine 1) means and a standard deviation for two pre and post treatment outcome measures in order to estimate sample size for the main study, 2) the need for an inpatient intervention for self-harm measured by number of participants eligible and accepting of the treatment, 3) retention of participants for 4 groups given the predicted short stays of patients on wards, and 4) the acceptability of the research process for this client group through feedback.