Summary

The Radical Openness programme teaches skills that provide new ways of coping for individuals who find it difficult to lessen their emotional control. This is a targeted approach for service users who are often underserved in mental health care. In 2016 service users who completed Radical Openness showed reductions in psychological distress as measured by mental ill health symptoms as well as emotional avoidance (i.e. avoiding the internal experience of emotion) and increases in social connectedness. These findings were consistent with previous years.

There is ongoing research on this programme being undertaken by a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology, which is looking at understanding problems of emotional over- and under- control and response to the DBT informed interventions (i.e. LTD and RO) offered at St Patricks Mental Health Services.