Evaluating a brief ‘Exploring and understanding emotions’ group based intervention in a CAMHS inpatient setting: A Practice Paper

Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMHS) inpatient services support young people with a variety of mental health difficulties (NHS,2018). Over the years there has been a shift in the level of acuity and complexity observed in children and young people accessing inpatient settings (Holland et al., 2023). In the present paper the authors outline a multi-modal group-based intervention informed by Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), the Zones of Regulation, and Trauma principles that was introduced within a Tier 4 CAMHS general adolescent inpatient unit. The paper presents initial evaluation findings from young people and staff who participated in the group. The authors also offer reflections and recommendations on the challenges and benefits of delivering an emotion regulation group-based intervention in an inpatient setting.