What this research is about:

A professional doctorate thesis exploring the lived experience of adult individuals who grew up with their mother being hospitalised for complex emotional needs at least once during their childhood. An IPA research project.

Why it is important:

To my knowledge, there has not been any UK research exploring the lived experience and sense-making of mental health and wellbeing needs of an adult, who when they were a child, their mother was hospitalised with CEN. The existing, limited research suggests that this experience likely has an enduring impact for these individuals, due to confounding risk factors of parental mental ill health and parental separation. In the UK, mothers remain responsible for the majority of unpaid childcare and household work.

Who can participate:

This study will recruit adult participants over the age of 18 years old, whose mother was hospitalised with CEN at least once when they were a child between the ages of 0 to 18 years old. These parameters are designed to be broad to reflect the exploratory nature of this study, to allow for exploration of aspects such as chronic or acute mental illness, developmental stage of child, and multiple separations through admission.

Parent-child separation can be defined as longer than typical daily or weekly separations associated with external factors, such as parental work. Therefore, this study will recruit participants with mothers who have spent at least 28 days in hospital.

Participant involvement:

Participants will be asked to engage with an individual online interview between 60 and 90 minutes. There will be a considered screening process and an offer of a verbal and written debrief. The interview will be conducted with trauma-informed care principles.

For individuals who meet the criteria and would like to participate, to please contact me via molly2.king@live.uwe.ac.uk

Please see here for more information.
Please see here to view the participant information sheet.

This project received a favourable opinion and ethical approval by UWE College Research Ethics Committee 0n 04/09/26. Research supervisor's name: Dr Lucy Blake, lucy5.blake@uwe.ac.uk