Active Mental Health Psychology & Behaviour

SloMo2: A process evaluation, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness study of a digitally supported therapy for psychosis in routine care

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

Paranoia is one of the most distressing symptoms of psychosis, and a new digital therapy called SlowMo is being rolled out into routine NHS care to help people challenge suspicious thoughts in real time. Why this matters: Current psychological treatments for paranoia are effective but hard to scale. They require extensive therapist training and are often inaccessible outside specialist services. SlowMo is a tablet-based therapy that combines cognitive behavioural techniques with a visual tool to help users slow down their thinking and notice when fast, automatic suspicious thoughts are misleading them. The therapy was co-designed with people who have lived experience of paranoia, and the new version—SlowMo2—aims to make it suitable for a wider range of practitioners, including those with less specialist training. If this succeeds: The project will produce a fully digital training package that automates workforce education, removing a major barrier to adoption. It will also generate a commercialisation strategy and a blueprint for NHS-wide spread. The goal is to make effective, evidence-based paranoia therapy available to far more people than current services can reach, without requiring every clinician to be a specialist. A cost-effectiveness analysis will help persuade NHS commissioners and regulators to adopt it permanently.

View original technical description
Our vision is to spread and sustain SlowMo therapy in mental health services, transforming outcomes for people with paranoia worldwide. The funding will lead to the following achievements: 1. Software code for SlowMo2 which has been co-designed with people with lived experience to support adoption by a) optimising impact on valued outcomes, b) ensuring suitability for widespread adoption across the psychological practitioner workforce and c) maintain strong user experience for a diverse range of people to support engagement. 2. Development of an e-learning package to automate workforce training. This will incorporate core training for established clinicians and an extended version specifically targeting the international need to expand low intensity psychological practitioner roles. 3. Endorsement of SlowMo’s value proposition by adopters, implementation partners and regulatory bodies, having further demonstrated effectiveness and cost effectiveness in routine care. 4. A commercialisation strategy and NHS Global Digital Exemplar Blueprint to support spread and sustainment of SlowMo, assisted by organisational support from the IoPPN’s digital therapeutics strategy and the King’s20 Accelerator. 5. Expansion of our lived experience community, collaboratively harnessing their expertise to expand SlowMo’s value proposition, including peer-led recovery college courses and product development of novel therapeutic targets.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

Amy Hardy (EPMC Awardee)Kareem Khan (EPMC Awardee)Kathryn Greenwood (EPMC Awardee)Lucy Walsh (EPMC Awardee)Michael Craven (EPMC Awardee)Paul McCrone (EPMC Awardee)Philippa Garety (EPMC Awardee)Richard Emsley (EPMC Awardee)Robert Dudley (EPMC Awardee)Thomas Ward (EPMC Awardee)

Related Research

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SlowMo2: A process evaluation, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness study of a digitally supported therapy for psychosis in routine care
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Original classification

Innovations Priority Project

Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.