Posted on: 25 October 2023
Dr David Raune, Clinical Psychologist, led and organised a psychology staff team to present two CNWL projects at the European Association of Behaviour and Cognitive Therapy (EABCT) in Turkey in October.
The presenting team consisted of Alara Kopuz, UCL MSc student, Simran Seera, Assistant Psychologist, Alysia Sweeney, Assistant Psychologist, and Dr Cassie Hazell, Surrey University.
The first project was a systematic review carried out by Jennifer Bond, UCL Psychiatry Department postgraduate student, exploring the clinical significance of early course verbal auditory hallucination features (N=1500).
The team hopes the review will contribute to the development of a new international standard for what is clinically important to assess at first episode psychosis, and what early intervention cognitive behaviour therapy should be targeting.
The second project was the Lived Experience Symptom Survey Quality Improvement (LESS) project. This analysis, carried out by UCL Psychology Department postgraduate student Alara Kopuz, systematically recorded the lived experience psychosocial impact of different types of delusions (N=400).
The results showed what psychological and social problems (and a few benefits) newly developed first-episode delusions bring our highly ethnically and culturally diverse patients. The first training of MDT staff (N=25) in this ‘personalisation’ of care took place on 7 October 2023 and their knowledge improvements will be evaluated soon. In the meantime, the team have already improved their Suitability Assessment screen to reflect the delusions which newly referred patients are likely to be harbouring.
Dr Raune would like to thank his funders NOCLOR and Professor Ryan Kemp, CNWL Director of Therapies. For managerial support, he would like to thank Krishan Sahota, Harrow and Hillingdon EIS team manager, Ali Modaresi, Lead Consultant Clinical Psychologies, and Alastair Penman, Hillingdon Borough Director.
