Amy Grant
Experiencing paranoia is like a beehive. Busy, noisy, unwanted thoughts racing around. Some paranoid thoughts are common and most people will experience them at some point. Like, “everyone is watching me”. But sometimes they can become overwhelming. Constantly buzzing around in your head. At times the worries can feel silly, childish or embarrassing, but in the moment the evidence is too compelling to ignore. This was my experience. I’m Amy, resident zine maker and lived experience researcher. I’m part of a team who are trying to help people overcome these types of worries with a new therapy called SloMo.
Amy Hardy
I’ve always been very passionate about working in mental health. I think the mind is fascinating and particularly in terms of psychosis. People with psychosis were more likely to have experienced trauma and are more likely to drop out of therapy. The challenge was how do we create a therapy that is more appealing and easier to use that would improve access, experience and outcomes.
Chris
My contribution to this project stems from me suffering with paranoia, anxiety and feeling overwhelmed. Whether it’s on the bus or in the queue in the supermarket, or just in a local park.
Amy Hardy
Paranoia is one of the most common difficulties in psychosis. Our ability to go on our gut instincts to make snap decisions. And that’s really important because we need to be able to do that to function in life. But if we rely on that too much, it can cause problems. What we set out to do was to try and develop a digitally supported therapy, synchronised with a mobile app for paranoia in psychosis. To support people to learn to slow down their thinking.
Chris
The challenge was for all of us to agree that the app is going to be designed in a way that’s going to be suitable for everyone.
Amy Hardy
Wellcome have supported this work. And what they allowed us to do was to put together an interdisciplinary team.
Anna Wojdecka
The key challenge of the project was finding the right analogy that will allow us to visualise thoughts. People who experienced such an emotional distress were finding it very difficult to think with abstract concepts, such as thoughts, while they were experiencing distress.
Chris
We didn’t want it to look too dull, but we didn’t want it to look too flashy either. If the app was a bit too tricky or flashy to use, that could heighten the anxiety.
Anna Wojdecka
To our surprise, it turned out that the analogy of thoughts as bubbles really resonated with people.
Amy Grant
Just like how speech bubbles let you see what a comic character might be thinking. SloMo uses bubbles to help you write out and see your own thoughts. It gives you a new perspective. You start to ask yourself different questions like, “why did I think that?”
Chris
The bubble’s perfect and it can spin as well. If your thoughts are really running, you can slow down the bubble.
Amy Grant
When I did SloMo therapy, writing in the bubbles helped me to slow down and process the situations I’m in. Because I was thinking more consciously.
Amy Hardy
We found that SloMo reduced paranoia, but importantly, we also found that it improved people’s confidence, wellbeing, and quality of life. Encouragingly, we found that SloMo was equally effective regardless of people’s backgrounds.
Anna Wojdecka
They felt heard. They started going out of the home, something that was really out of reach for them before. Yeah, it was very powerful to hear that.
Amy Grant
The number one thing SloMo has done for me is build confidence. From that, other areas in my life have improved, such as my relationships, socialising, and pursuing other goals. I hope SloMo will reach the people who usually slip through the net and give them the confidence to achieve what they want in life.
Amy Hardy
Digital health has significant potential to revolutionise mental health care. So we’re really encouraged and we’re very keen to move into scaling up SloMo across other NHS trusts in the UK.
Chris
I’m definitely proud, 100%. I personally do see the difference it can and will make.
