Psychologists develop new skills group to help reduce self-harm

Psychologists working with women who regularly self-harm have implemented a new group to help them find other ways of managing overwhelming emotions.

Staff from the Rehabilitation and High Support Directorate (RHSD), part of Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, found that many women in high support units, including Stansfield Place in Rochdale, used self-harm as a way of coping with their emotions.

In order to support them, Clinical Psychologists Dr Rachel Chin and Dr Yvonne Young provided training for 27 Pennine Care staff.

The aim of the training was to equip staff with new ways of working with service users in distress and to help service users practice the skills outside of the group.

The courses are based around Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) – a talking therapy aimed at supporting people who experience intense emotions.

The Managing Emotions group is being trialled with service users until March 2015 and, if it proves effective, could be rolled out to others using Pennine Care’s RHSD services.

Dr Chin said the training had meant staff were better able to support service users to manage their emotions.

She said: “We know that managing distressing and overwhelming emotions can be a major difficulty for some of the women in our services.

“By training our staff to deliver DBT we can help them to identify and adopt new ways of managing their feelings without self-harming, improve their emotional wellbeing and potentially help them be discharged from hospital more quickly.”

Dr Young added: “The response so far has been very positive and we are hoping to use this DBT approach with more of our service users in the future.”