Understanding and Helping Families: Parents experiencing psychosis

In the UK 1 in 100individuals experience a psychosis related illness, and approximately¼ have dependent children. Unfortunately, up to 50% currently losecustody of their child. Psychosis is one of the top ten leading causesof disability worldwide, costing approximately £12 billion annually.Functional decline and lack of cognitive insight can lead tomisinterpretations of daily experiences, causing faulty behavioural,emotional and cognitive responses. In turn, this may result indestructive levels of child-blaming, confusion and guilt.Consequently, the emotional quality and availability of the parent maybe restricted. Such combinations can make parenting a morecomplicated, burdensome and demanding task. Maladaptive parentingpractices are robust predictors of internalising and externalisingchild behaviours across all developmental stages. Phase one of thestudy aims to understand parenting experiences by exploring expressedemotion and attributions using the Camberwell Family Interview. Theattributions and emotional responses parents display can act as abeneficial or burdening feature of parenting practices, cognitions andself-efficacy. The theoretical underpinnings of expressed emotion andparental attributions, and the inclusion of a matched comparison groupof well-parents, will help identify potential behaviour changemechanisms. This identification could help develop and tailor theparenting intervention for parents experiencing psychosis. The secondphase involves the implementation of an established self-directed 10week parenting intervention. A multiple baseline case series will beemployed, which will allow changes to well-being, symptoms,functioning, parental role and perceived competency to be assessed andvisually analysed during baseline, intervention and follow-up.