“Supporting me through emotional times, all different kinds of behaviour.” Forensic mental health service users understanding of positive behavioural support

Abstract

This service evaluation project explored service users’ experiences of positive behavioural support (PBS) within a medium secure mental health service. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used to analyse interviews with ten service users. Four main themes emerged from the data: My plan; How I understand PBS; How PBS has helped me, the benefits; and Making the plan work. Overall, service users viewed their experience of having a PBS plan positively. They reflected that the plans offered staff greater understanding of their behaviours and needs, enabling them to receive appropriate support. Service users valued the experience of being involved in the process, offering important insights into their experiences. They also expressed frustrations about staff not following the plan and not understanding why they had a plan whilst others did not. Limitations of the study, clinical implications and ideas for future research have been discussed.

Keywords:

• Positive behavioural support (PBS)
• forensic mental health services
• interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA)
• mentally ill offenders
• medium secure

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the service users that gave their time and participated in the study. We would also like to thank the service managers for their ongoing support and commitment to the PBS project, in particular, Mike Sullivan and Ruth Bagshaw.