The COPING study will work in partnership with young people aged 16-25 with lived experience of self-harm and GPs to develop a treatment guide (called COPING) for GPs to use with young people to reduce repeat self-harm.
It is a four-year research programme that began in January 2021.
Self-harm in young people is a major public health problem and impacts young people, families, society, and the health service. Around one in four young people have harmed themselves previously. It is important that each self-harm episode in a young person is taken seriously. Self-harm is also closely associated with death by suicide.
Young people commonly reach out to their GP for help with their self-harm. GPs however are limited at the moment with what they can offer to young people who self-harm because there is a lack of evidence and clinical guidelines of how GPs should help young people who struggle with self-harm.
The COPING study aims to change this by providing high-quality research evidence to inform a future full-scale clinical trial of COPING in the NHS to guide GPs in managing self-harm in young people.
Stage 1:
Interviews with GPs to understand clinical practice and gain thoughts on acceptable and realistic elements of COPING
Stage 2:
Findings from stage 1 will be used together with evidence to help the co-production of COPING with young people who have harmed themselves and GPs. COPING will then be refined through practice consultations.
Stage 3:
GPs will then deliver COPING to patients in general practice to see if it is possible to do a large trial and see if COPING is acceptable to both patients and GPs.
The research team will make improvements to COPING based on the results. Patient, family, public, and stakeholder involvement informs all stages of this study.
- Website: https://www.keele.ac.uk/coping/eoi/