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TYPPEX Study

Tailoring evidence-based psychological therapY for People with common mental disorder including Psychotic EXperiences

Project overview

The University of Cambridge and Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust have received funding from the National Institute for Health Research for a five-year study to develop a form of talking therapy that will meet the needs of people with common mental health problems and psychotic experiences. 

 

It will involve the use of a brief questionnaire to help identify people using IAPT services with psychotic experiences.  

 

The study aims to use research evidence and the views shared by service-users and IAPT therapists to design a new therapy for these people which can be delivered by trained IAPT therapists.

 

This talking therapy will be offered to service users in IAPT settings, making it more accessible and less stigmatising than specialist mental health services.  

 

It is hoped it will help IAPT service-users and also support services to achieve their challenging performance targets, providing a blueprint for testing other therapies beyond the current offering. 

Project details

Too many people with common mental health problems, such as depression or anxiety, do not recover after receiving talking therapy.  

 

People usually have cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), delivered by Improving Access to Psychological Therapy (IAPT) services – also called psychological well-being services.

 

Some people who do not get better can experience more severe forms of common mental health problems, including psychotic experiences such as paranoia or hearing voices. 

 

About one in five people in the UK using IAPT services have some psychotic experiences, often after traumatic events. Currently, IAPT services do not support these people particularly well. In some cases, they are referred to specialist ‘early-intervention’ psychosis services.

 

These specialist services tend to focus on psychotic experiences and the risk of people developing more severe mental health conditions such as schizophrenia. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of people who have psychotic experiences do not develop schizophrenia.

 

These services also do not usually address the depression, anxiety, and other problems that often affect this group of people.  

We are facilitating the service user involvement for this study in the form of a Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP) of twelve service users.  

 

The LEAP will provide advice and assistance to the wider study team as the research progresses, as well being involved in helping develop materials for different aspects of the study. 

The TYPEXX study website is currently under development – please check back on this page for future updates. 

In the meantime, you can view study updates by following the study group on Twitter @TYPPEX_prog. 

For more information on the lived experience involvement in the study please email [email protected].

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We are always excited to hear from others who want to collaborate on mental health research. From delivering peer research to helping you with public involvement strategies and providing training, get in touch to chat.