Enhancing emotion regulation with an in situ socially assistive robot among LGBTQ+ youth with self-harm ideation: protocol for a randomised controlled trial
Chris Hollis,
Kareem Khan,
Peter Fonagy,
Rohan Borschmann,
Cathy Creswell,
Kapil Sayal,
Nitish Jawahar,
A Jess Williams,
Ellen Townsend,
Dorothee Auer,
Praveetha Patalay,
Yvonne Kelly,
Christopher R Tench,
Paul Stallard,
Louise Arseneault,
Sieun Lee,
Sally Merry,
Charlotte Hall,
Jo Gregory,
Rory O’Connor,
Emma Nielsen,
Edmund Sonuga-Barke,
Seonaid Cleare,
James Gross,
Amelia Chapman-Nisar,
Nkem Naeche,
Petr Slovak,
Emily Lloyd,
Josimar De Alcantara Mendes,
Carolyn Ten Holter,
Marina Jirotka,
Zsofia Lazar,
Aaron Kandola,
Sonia Livingstone,
Kasia Kostryka-Allchorne,
Jake Bourgaize,
Mariya Stoilova,
Marianne Etherson,
Chris Greenhalgh,
Jim Warren,
Vajisha Wanniarachchi,
Kevin Glover,
Mathijs Lucassen,
Karolina Stasiak,
Camilla Babbage,
Adam Parker,
Joanna Lockwood,
Elvira Perez Vallejos,
Rebecca Woodcock,
Sarah Doherty,
Lucy-Paige Willingham
Affiliations
Chris Hollis
Division of Psychiatry, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Kareem Khan
Peter Fonagy
Rohan Borschmann
Murdoch Children`s Research Institute, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
Cathy Creswell
6 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Kapil Sayal
2 School of Medicine, Mental Health and Clinical Neurosciences, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Nitish Jawahar
A Jess Williams
Department of Informatics, King`s College London, London, UK
Ellen Townsend
School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Dorothee Auer
Praveetha Patalay
Yvonne Kelly
Christopher R Tench
Division of Clinical Neuroscience, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Paul Stallard
1 Department for Health, University of Bath, Bath, UK
Louise Arseneault
Sieun Lee
Sally Merry
Charlotte Hall
Jo Gregory
Rory O’Connor
Emma Nielsen
Edmund Sonuga-Barke
Seonaid Cleare
Department of Informatics, King`s College London, London, UK
James Gross
Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
Amelia Chapman-Nisar
University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Nkem Naeche
University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Petr Slovak
Department of Informatics, King`s College London, London, UK
Introduction Purrble, a socially assistive robot, was codesigned with children to support in situ emotion regulation. Preliminary evidence has found that LGBTQ+ youth are receptive to Purrble and find it to be an acceptable intervention to assist with emotion dysregulation and their experiences of self-harm. The present study is designed to evaluate the impact of access to Purrble among LGBTQ+ youth who have self-harmful thoughts, when compared with waitlist controls.Methods and analysis The study is a single-blind, randomised control trial comparing access to the Purrble robot with waitlist control. A total of 168 LGBTQ+ youth aged 16–25 years with current self-harmful ideation will be recruited, all based within the UK. The primary outcome is emotion dysregulation (Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale-8) measured weekly across a 13-week period, including three pre-deployment timepoints. Secondary outcomes include self-harm (Self-Harm Questionnaire), anxiety (Generalised Anxiety Disorder-7) and depression (Patient Health Questionnaire-9). We will conduct analyses using linear mixed models to assess primary and secondary hypotheses. Intervention participants will have unlimited access to Purrble over the deployment period, which can be used as much or as little as they like. After all assessments, control participants will receive their Purrble, with all participants keeping the robot after the end of the study. After the study has ended, a subset of participants will be invited to participate in semistructured interviews to explore engagement and appropriation of Purrble, considering the young people’s own views of Purrble as an intervention device.Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval was received from King’s College London (RESCM-22/23-34570). Findings will be disseminated in peer review open access journals and at academic conferences.Trial registration number NCT06025942.
