NELFT CFT | ADAPT Lab

Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT)

Being Kind to Ourselves: Compassion focused therapy (CFT) for improving mood in dementia

About Us

At North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT) we are dedicated to advancing knowledge and improving the lives of individuals in mental health care. We are passionate about conducting meaningful research that is tailored to the individual and designed to have an impact far beyond the four walls of a laboratory.
We aim to reshape the researcher-participant relationship, recognising that you are much more than a participant - you are an expert with lived experience. We want to work alongside you to help drive mental health research forward.

Click Here to meet the team: https://www.nelft.nhs.uk/meet-the-team

What is CFT?

The focus of CFT is as follows:

•Help us to develop kindness to ourselves when we are in distress.
•Promote wellbeing and healing by encouraging people to be compassionate towards themselves and others.

This is achieved by sessions focusing on developing mindfulness techniques, imagery, and breathing exercises to help you respond to yourself with warmth and care when you most need it.

Click on the video to learn more.

What is the study about?

It is not uncommon to observe individuals with a diagnosis of dementia also presenting with low mood, significantly adding to the impairment of the individuals' quality of life. However, there are limited treatment options available to tackle this problem.

We will be applying group CFT to people with dementia and will be measuring the effect that has on improving mood. Selected individuals will receive 12 60-minute virtual or face-to-face sessions of compassion focused therapy. The mood of the people with dementia will be measured before the therapy, as well as directly after the 12 week treatment program and then one final time after a period of 6 months to assess how effective CFT was for improving mood in dementia.

Hear from the experiences of people who have undergone CFT:

"He went from a very, very sick man who was kind of within himself — like in a shell — and then all of a sudden, he brought himself out of this awful place, I think it did him really good. It was great seeing him do that. It brought tears to my eyes."

"Because they're like me. I'm not the one on my own. Because that's how I felt, like I was on my own. But I wasn't, you know, because I'd got everybody with me [...] They change my attitude towards things [...] I'm not the only person on the earth who hurts"

"I’ve never been a person that could stand up and really command an audience [...] I found I didn’t have to have that down. Just you know, we could all speak so freely […]It helped me get over my fears in talking to people"