Patient and Mental Health Care Professionals’ Perspectives on Health Promotion in Psychiatric Clinical Practice: A Focus Group Study

Abstract

The need to protect the physical health of people with mental illness is increasingly acknowledged. We conducted six focus groups with 14 patients and 12 mental health care professionals to explore their individual and mutual perspectives on health promotion in daily clinical practice. Three main themes: Health as a balancing act; Dilemmas for health promotion; and Ideals and responsibility for health promotion in clinical practice were identified using thematic analysis. We discuss how aligning mutual expectations and creating an authentic dialogue based on the identification of and respect for patients’ individual resources can support health promotion in clinical psychiatry.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all of the participants in our study as well as the departmental managers who made this study possible and aided in recruitment. We would also like to thank Stine Schnor-Olsen for helping with the transcriptions.

Disclosure statement

This study was conducted without external funding. The authors report no conflict of interest.

Availability of data and materials

Due to privacy protection issues and according to Danish legislation, the datasets supporting the conclusions of this article are available only to the researchers involved in the project.