O'Reilly, Sarah;
(2025)
A feasibility and accept ability randomized comparative trial of mentalization and mindfulness interventions for people with depression and/or anxiety when they experience high perceived expressed emotion.
Doctoral thesis (D.Clin.Psy), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
This thesis comprises: 1. A systematic review of interventions targeting parental mentalization (parental reflective functioning, mind mindedness or insightfulness) in parents of children with neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It includes nine intervention studies where parental mentalization was measured as an outcome for parents and highlights quality issues in existing research, in particular related to reliable measurement of parental mentalization and mentalization-based intervention integrity. 2. The findings of a pilot randomised comparative trial assessing the feasibility and acceptability of app-based mindfulness vs. mentalization-based ecological momentary interventions (EMIs) for adults with symptoms of depression and/or generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) when perceived expressed emotion (EE) is rated high using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Recruitment (N = 84), retention (89%) and EMA engagement (88%) rates indicates that a larger scale RCT would be acceptable and feasible and preliminary clinical ef indicates future investigation is warranted, with large within-subjects improvements reported for both EMI groups from pre to post intervention on the GAD-7 and Patient Hospital Qustionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). The pilot was conducted jointly with another Trainee Clinical Psychologist, Agata Jaremba, who examined an independent research question (Jaremba, 2025). Implications for a future RCT are outlined, including a recommendation to use an alternative measure of mentalization due to limitations of the measure used in the pilot (the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire-8). 3. A critical appraisal of the process of conducting the systematic review and empirical paper.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | D.Clin.Psy |
| Title: | A feasibility and accept ability randomized comparative trial of mentalization and mindfulness interventions for people with depression and/or anxiety when they experience high perceived expressed emotion |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10215506 |
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