A randomized controlled trial of a brief health promotion intervention in a population with serious mental illness

Abstract

Background: People with serious mental illness have high rates of mortality and physical morbidity. Some of this is due to unhealthy lifestyle factors. Many mental health services are beginning to develop health promotion interventions for this population but these have not, to date, been properly evaluated.

Aims: To measure whether a brief health promotion intervention delivered by a non-specialist worker can deliver useful health gains in a population with serious mental illness.

Method: A randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a particular health promotion package using physiological measures and validated research instruments to measure outcome.

Results: The study population had an unhealthy lifestyle at outset. The intervention produced small but statistically significant gains in exercise and weight loss with a trend to improved subjective well being. There was a high drop out rate.

Conclusions: People with serious mental illness are an appropriate target group for health promotion activities. They are concerned about their health and interested in trying to improve it. This intervention produced significant health gains but probably did not engage enough patients to justify incorporation into standard treatment packages.

Declaration of interest: The authors do not identify any conflict of interest. The principal researcher undertook the study as part of her undergraduate education. The study interventions were based on the Lilly Meaningful Day package which was supplied by Lilly. We received no other support from Lilly or any other commercial organization.

Keywords:

• Mental illness
• health promotion
• lifestyle