Mental health problems are common in youth in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), including South Africa. Preventative interventions, based on cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), delivered in schools, have been found to alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety in high income countries (HICs). However, less is known about whether youth in LMICs are able to engage with the core concepts of CBT.

To explore how young people in the Western Cape, South Africa, understand key CBT concepts, such as feelings, thoughts and behaviours.

We interviewed 22 young people (10–15 years of age; mean age 11.6 years; SD = 1.0) recruited from two public primary schools in the Western Cape, South Africa. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, translated from Afrikaans into English where necessary and analysed thematically using a deductive approach.

Young people described feelings as internal, private, and should only be shared with trusted others. They also described how feelings varied, depending on the situation. They found the concept of thoughts more challenging to describe. Youth were able to say what they do when they experience unpleasant feelings, and they linked their behaviours to their feelings and thoughts.

In this cultural context, our qualitative investigation found evidence that young people were able to engage with abstract concepts including feelings and to some degree, thoughts. To ensure that CBT-based interventions are developmentally appropriate and accessible, psychoeducation may help youth distinguish between thoughts, feelings and behaviours, and a focus on identifying and naming feelings may be beneficial.

Parents of children with eczema or psoriasis experience high levels of parenting stress, which can negatively impact their child’s mental and physical health.

We aimed to investigate the effectiveness, feasibility and acceptability of a mindful parenting intervention for parents of children with eczema or psoriasis.

Seven parents of children (4–12 years old) with eczema or psoriasis took part in an 8-week mindful parenting group intervention. A single-case experimental design was adopted, whereby parents completed daily idiographic measures of parenting stress related to their child’s skin condition. Parents also completed standardised questionnaires measuring their parenting stress, depression, anxiety and quality of life, and children completed a quality of life measure, at four time points: baseline, pre-intervention, post-intervention and 6-week follow-up. Parents provided qualitative feedback after the intervention.

All parents completed the intervention and showed improvements in idiographic measures of parenting stress from baseline to follow-up. Improvements in parenting stress were larger at follow-up than post-intervention, suggesting the benefits of intervention continue beyond the intervention. Six of seven parent–child dyads showed improvement in at least one of the wellbeing measures, from pre-intervention to post-intervention or follow-up. Feasibility was demonstrated through good participant retention, adherence to home practice, and treatment fidelity. Acceptability was demonstrated through positive parent evaluations of the intervention.

Mindful parenting can be an effective, feasible and acceptable intervention for parents of children with eczema or psoriasis. Future studies should attempt to replicate the findings through randomised controlled trials.

Empirical studies between anger and anger-provoking cognitive variables in children and adolescents are lacking, despite numerous studies on internalising and externalising problems.

The purpose of this study was to develop new questionnaires for anger-provoking cognitive errors and automatic thoughts, and examine relationships between anger, cognitive errors, and automatic thoughts in children and adolescents.

Participants were 485 Japanese children and adolescents aged 9–15 years old (254 females; average age 12.07; SD = 1.81). They completed the Anger Children’s Cognitive Error Scale (A-CCES) and the Anger Children’s Automatic Thought Scale (A-CATS), which were developed in this study, as well as the Anger Scale for Children and Adolescents and the Japanese version of Short Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale.

Both the A-CCES and the A-CATS had adequate reliability (internal consistency) and validity (face validity, structural validity and construct validity). A hierarchal regression analysis indicated that automatic thoughts were positively and moderately related to anger (β = .37) after controlling for age, gender, anxiety symptoms, cognitive errors and interaction term. Moreover, a mediation analysis indicated that automatic thoughts significantly mediated the relationship between cognitive errors and anger (indirect effect, 0.24; 95% CI: .020 to .036).

This study developed the new questionnaires to assess anger-provoking cognitive errors and automatic thoughts. In addition, this study revealed that automatic thoughts rather than cognitive errors are associated with anger in children and adolescents.

An Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) service in England has implemented cognitive analytic therapy guided self-help (CAT-GSH) alongside cognitive behavioural guided self-help (CBT-GSH) in order to support enhanced patient choice. This study sought to explore the acceptability to psychological wellbeing practitioners (PWPs) of delivering CAT-GSH.

This study used a qualitative design with semi-structured interviews and associated thematic analysis (TA). A sample of n=12 PWPs experienced in delivering CAT-GSH were interviewed.

Five over-arching themes (containing 12 subthemes) were identified and conceptually mapped: (a) the past-present focus (made up of working with clients’ pasts and the different type of change work), (b) expanding the treatment offer (from the perspective of PWPs and clients), (c) the time and resources required to effectively deliver CAT-GSH (to enable safe and effective delivery for clients and personal/professional development for PWPs), (d) understanding CAT-GSH (made up of confidence, learning new therapeutic language/concepts and appreciating the difference with CBT-GSH) and (e) joint exploration (made up of therapeutic/supervisory relationships and enhanced collaboration).

CAT-GSH appears an acceptable (but challenging) approach for PWPs to deliver in IAPT services. Services should prioritise training and supervision for PWPs to ensure good governance of delivery.

It has been suggested that cognitive behavioural therapy for older adults be augmented with age-appropriate methods to enhance outcomes for depression treatment.

This study investigated whether a CBT wisdom enhancement timeline technique for older adults reduced depression, as well as increase self-compassion and self-assessed wisdom.

An N-of-1 series trial with non-concurrent multiple-baseline AB design was conducted. Older adults experiencing depression, recruited from mental health service waiting lists, were randomly assigned to baseline conditions. Participants received five individual sessions of the examined intervention, offering a structured way of utilising one’s life experiences to evolve the psychological resource of wisdom within a cognitive behavioural framework, in order to improve mood. Participants completed idiographic daily measures and self-report standardised measures of depression, anxiety, self-compassion and wisdom during baseline and intervention phases, and at 1 month follow-up.

Six participants competed the study and were subject to standardised and single-case data analyses. Four participants were deemed responders with reliable changes in depression post-intervention with idiographic changes coinciding with intervention onset. Two participants saw clinically significant changes in depression scores at follow-up. One responder saw significant changes in measures of self-compassion and self-assessed wisdom.

The examined technique shows promise as an effective technique for reducing depression in older adults. There is insufficient evidence to implicate wisdom and/or self-compassion as significant mechanisms of change. Clinical and theoretical implications are discussed.

The way people with psychosis psychologically adapt and manage the diagnosis of such a mental disorder has been considered a key factor that contributes to the emergence and aggravation of emotional problems. These beliefs about illness can be very important due to their possible association with stigma and its implications in terms of loss of roles and social status. Given the importance of these personal beliefs about the specific diagnosis of psychosis, the Personal Beliefs about Illness Questionnaire (PBIQ) and PBIQ-R have been developed.

The present study aims to explore the psychometric characteristics of the Spanish version of the PBIQ-R in a sample of patients with a diagnosis of psychosis-related disorders.

Participants were 155 patients (54.8% male) of the Public Health Service in Andalusia (Spain). Those who consented to participate filled in the PBIQ-R, the Social Comparison Scale, and the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 to measure emotional symptoms.

All dimensions showed adequate internal consistency values: Cronbach’s alpha extends between .81 and .88; and McDonald’s omega ranges between .87 and .92. The temporal reliability for an interval of 3–4 weeks was high. The correlations between the PBIQ-R dimensions and the other variables included in the study were significant and in the expected direction. The factor analysis of the principal components of the PBIQ-R dimensions revealed a single factor in each of the dimensions that explained 64–74%.

The results support the reliability and validity of the Spanish version of the PBIQ-R.

Hoarding disorder (HD) can be understood through the cognitive behavioural model in the context of vulnerability factors (for example, personality traits, co-morbidities, traumatic life events) and beliefs about possessions (for example, identity, emotional attachment, memory, utility). Less is known about the strength of these hypothesised beliefs, or how they interact within the hoarding population, with researchers suggesting that specifying beliefs would improve treatment outcomes.

The current study explored beliefs in HD, utilising Q-methodology to explore both categories of beliefs and the interactions between these. Moreover, Q-methodology allowed for comparison of the individuals endorsing specific categories of beliefs.

A comprehensive list of beliefs about possessions was developed. Thirty-two adults with clinically significant levels of HD completed a Q-sort task, alongside measures of proposed vulnerabilities, including co-morbidity, trauma and attachment style.

Q-factor analysis produced four profiles consisting of groups of participants who endorsed the same beliefs and had shared characteristics: (1) ‘Expression of identity’, (2) ‘Responsibility and morality’, (3) ‘Stability and predictability’, and (4) ‘Objects as emotional and meaningful beings’.

The profiles were distinguished by different categories of beliefs and co-morbid symptoms, suggesting that more targeted assessment tools and interventions would be beneficial to account for this heterogeneity within the clinical population. In particular, beliefs about identity and self-concept formed the largest profile, and beliefs about stability and predictability introduce a novel category of beliefs.