The Psychology Department in St Patrick’s Mental Health Services (SPMHS) runs two group programmes for young adults.
Young adults face unique challenges that can contribute to mental health difficulties.
Our Psychology Department offers two separate group programmes which are specially designed for young adults aged between 18 and 25. The Young Adult Formulation Group provides a space for young people to make sense of their experiences and to develop a psychological understanding of their mental health difficulties. Emotion-Focused Therapy for Young Adults is a group psychological intervention designed for young people who struggle with harsh self-criticism and wish to work through difficult emotions.
In these group programmes, young people benefit from working with psychologists and learning from the experiences of other young people with similar difficulties.
Young Adult Formulation Group
The Young Adult Formulation Group programme is for young people who wish to develop a psychological understanding of their difficulties, coping strategies and strengths.
Formulation is a process that helps us to understand our life story. It involves reflecting on our background, experiences and coping strategies, and considering how those different factors have contributed to where and how we are today.
With the support of psychologists and other group members, this programme aims to help young people to develop a clearer understanding of the ways in which their life experiences, challenges and current ways of coping are connected. The group supports members to re-tell their stories, to find new meaning in old experiences, and maybe even to help to construct a new understanding of themselves.
A formulation doesn’t teach us to do anything differently. However, fully understanding why we behave in the ways that we do can be very powerful in preparing us to make the changes that we want. It is hoped that developing a formulation helps young people to make an informed decision about what they think would help them to make the changes that they want in their lives.
The Young Adult Formulation Group involves working with other young people aged 18 to 25 and with psychologists from SPMHS. The group meets once a week for eight weeks. Two individual sessions also take place with a member of our Psychology Department: one midway through the group and another at the end of the group.
The programme is open to young adults who are under the care of a consultant psychiatrist in a multidisciplinary team (MDT) here in SPMHS and referrals can be made by their MDT’s psychologist.
Emotion-Focused Therapy
Emotion-Focused Therapy for Young Adults (EFT-YA) works with young people between the ages of 18 and 25 who are feeling stuck. The feeling of being stuck is both internal, in terms of their patterns of thinking and feeling, and external, in terms of their behaviour.
This ‘stuckness’ is often experienced as a feeling that other people are getting on with their lives, while we find it hard to do so. Often, our attempts to move forward are blocked by harsh, self-critical processes, which leave us feeling frustrated, hopeless, anxious, and helpless. We can also feel lonely, as our distress seems too difficult to communicate to others, leaving us feeling isolated and misunderstood.
The EFT-YA group can be beneficial for any young adult who:
- struggles with a harshly contemptuous (insulting) or anxious self-critic
- can express emotions once they are evoked
- feels compassion for others, although not necessarily for themselves.
EFT-YA is a 14-week group for young adults who are willing to work through painful emotions in order to come out the other side. It is open to young adults who are receiving care from an SPMHS consultant psychiatrist and MDT, and referrals can be made by the psychologist in their MDT.