We’re excited that our main results article has just been published!
The article reports on whether the study was feasible and acceptable, the clinical outcomes, and the perspectives of the therapists, recruitment sites and people with aphasia.
It’s open access, free to download. Click here to read the paper.
Solution Focused Brief Therapy in Post-Stroke Aphasia (SOFIA): feasibility and acceptability results of a feasibility randomised wait-list controlled trial
BMJ Open 11:e050308. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-050308
We’ve also created a 4-minute video summarising the results.
Here’s the link to the video:
Here are some key findings:
The therapy was perceived as valuable and acceptable both to people with aphasia and also the Speech and Language Therapists working in the trial. 44% of our participants had severe aphasia – they also gave the therapy the thumbs up.
We were able to recruit to time and on target.
We were able to retain people within the trial: we followed up 97% of our participants at 6 months.
Training, regular supervision and real-time support were all considered essential to enable Speech and Language Therapists to deliver this intervention.
A big thank you to everyone who came to the SOFIA online dissemination event on Thursday 17th June. We were delighted to welcome 137 attendees from across the world – and touched by all the supportive and positive feedback.
If you were unable to come to the event, there is a recording now available.
Qualitative journal article
We are also very excited that a SOFIA paper has recently been published in Qualitative Health Research journal. This article explores how 30 people with aphasia experienced receiving Solution Focused Brief Therapy. It is open access, so free to download.
Northcott, S., Simpson, A., Thomas, S., Barnard, R. A., Burns, K., Hirani, S. P., & Hilari, K. (2021). ‘Now I am myself’: exploring how people with post-stroke aphasia experienced Solution Focused Brief Therapy within the SOFIA Trial. Qualitative health research. doi:10.1177/10497323211020290
We also made a 3-minute video summarising this article.
We will share what we found out from the project. You will also be able to hear the therapists reflect on how they found delivering the intervention, and listen to the story of a person living with aphasia.
Welcome to this first blog post for the SOFIA research project!
This is a project exploring a psychological intervention called Solution Focused Brief Therapy for people living with post-stroke aphasia. Aphasia occurs when the communication centre of the brain is damaged, and can cause difficulties with talking, understanding, reading or writing.
This blog is to share our research with you. There are sections on the blog site where we discuss:
information for people with aphasia who would like to take part (click here)
project details (click here), including my journey in setting up the project (click here)
links to useful articles and information
We hope there will be sections of interest to clinicians, people living with stroke and aphasia, their friends and family members, as well as other researchers.
I’m looking forward to writing blog posts. The posts will discuss:
reflections on using Solution Focused Brief Therapy
how we are getting on with the research
personal stories and commentaries written by other people involved in the project
We also hope that this blog will be a way of hearing from you: we’d love to hear your perspective on our research, and what you would find useful in these blog posts.
It has been my privilege to listen to the stories of people living with stroke and aphasia over the last fifteen years. Too often people with aphasia are not able to access high quality psychological support due to their language difficulties. Through our research we hope to show that it is possible to make psychological therapies work well for people with aphasia. In developing this research project I have worked closely with numerous people including people with aphasia, other researchers, and clinicians. Through this blog I hope to share some of what we have learnt along the way.
*** This project is hosted by City, University of London and funded by the Stroke Association Jack and Averil (Mansfield) Bradley Fellowship Award for Stroke Research ***
