‘Give us something to do’: reflections on running a group therapy programme

Abstract

People on inpatient psychiatric wards often report feeling bored, and say that they would like access to therapy groups on the ward to help aid their recovery. However, there are many challenges to providing groups on wards, including lack of staff with the requisite time and expertise. This paper describes how a therapy group programme was designed and implemented on a psychiatric triage ward. The group programme was psychology-led, with involvement from the nursing team as cofacilitators. Challenges and opportunities arising from this approach are discussed, with some suggestions for areas of research and practice warranting further exploration.

A systematic review of the implementation of psychological therapies in acute mental health inpatient settings

“…The most frequently reported barrier related to the nature of the inpatient environment and care delivery, which was highlighted in 14 out of 16 studies. The most common obstacle was a lack of time that staff had to deliver psychological therapy, which was most frequent when psychological therapies were being delivered by non‐psychological staff (Chang et al, 2014; Folke et al, 2015; Jacobsen & Clark, 2016). The wards are inherently busy, staff members have other responsibilities to attend to and service users have other appointments (Fife et al, 2019; Tyrberg et al, 2017).…”

“…The studies outlined that not all multidisciplinary team members were appropriately trained or had the confidence to use therapeutic approaches (Folke et al, 2015; Jacobsen & Clark, 2016; Small et al, 2018). The sessions were also not delivered routinely because of persistent operational challenges such as staff sickness, unplanned leave and unpredictable rotas (Jacobsen & Clark, 2016; Paterson et al, 2019; Gaudiano et al, 2020). The articles also suggested that some nursing staff did not feel running therapeutic groups was appropriate for their role (Moore et al, 2019).…”

“…Training programmes alleviated the staff member's uncertainties, increased their knowledge and confidence to facilitate psychology groups (Awenat et al, 2019; Chang et al, 2014). One article also mentioned the advantage of observing and co‐facilitating groups with clinical psychologists before taking on a larger therapeutic role (Jacobsen & Clark, 2016).…”

“…The 16 articles included six qualitative papers (Awenat et al, 2018(Awenat et al, , 2019Donaghay-Spire et al, 2016;Small et al, 2018;Tyrberg et al, 2017;Wood et al, 2019), one RCT (Wood et al, 2018), four non-randomised trials (Chang et al, 2014;Fife et al, 2019;Gaudiano et al, 2020;Paterson et al, 2019), one mixed methods design (Heriot-Maitland et al, 2014) and four case series (Davidson et al, 2009;Folke et al, 2015;Jacobsen & Clark, 2016;Moore et al, 2019).…”

“…In addition to this, only 38% of was also not delivered as intended because of limited therapy resources (Paterson et al, 2019). All four quantitative descriptive studies were unclear because the sampling strategies and procedures were inadequately reported (Davidson et al, 2009;Folke et al, 2015;Jacobsen & Clark, 2016;Moore et al, 2019). There was insufficient information to determine whether the sample was representative of the target population and whether nonresponse bias was present.…”