Metacognitive therapy (MCT) trial on the cardiac PATHWAY to success!

The PATHWAY team at Manchester Mental Health & Social Care Trust (MMHSCT) celebrated success this week as all three study sites successfully enrolled their first participants.  So congratulations to Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CMFT), University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust (UHSM), and East Cheshire NHS Trust for getting recruitment up and running. And thanks to the MAHSC Clinical Trials Unit at the Christie for supporting the PATHWAY team.

PATHWAY is trialling a type of psychological therapy called metacognitive therapy (MCT), developed by Manchester’s very own Professor Adrian Wells, the Chief Investigator of the project.  MCT is a psychological treatment that helps people to manage worries and low mood through reducing unhelpful styles of thinking, and has been shown to alleviate depression and anxiety in mental health settings.  You can find out more about MCT here.

The randomised controlled trial will look at whether group-based MCT is helpful for people with different types of heart disease attending cardiac rehabilitation services (CR).  People who are experiencing distress following a recent cardiac event will be randomised to either group MCT plus usual CR, or usual CR alone, to see which is most helpful. More information on the research project can be found here.

PATHWAY is funded by a £2 million grant from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR).  It is a collaboration between the University of Manchester and the University of Liverpool, and hosted by MMHSCT. The trial is supported by a team of four researchers, a Senior Clinical Research Fellow, and a Programme Manager, with experience in clinical and health psychology, and quantitative and qualitative research methodology.  The team are passionate about improving healthcare through research and two of the researchers recently visited their old college to inspire the next generation of healthcare researchers.

The team are based at the Rawnsley Building, Manchester Royal Infirmary and you can follow their PATHWAY updates on Twitter. Pathway is in the early stages of recruitment and is looking forward to continued success with the support of all the study sites and partners.  So thank you again to all involved for a great start to an exciting project.

If you are interested in MCT there is a conference being held in Milan in April 2016 www.mctconference.no/2016and calls for submissions are out. You may also wish to look at the MCT-Institute website which can be found here.