A controlled trial of a needs‐based, nurse‐led psychoeducation programme for Chinese patients with first‐onset mental disorders: 6 month follow up

Abstract

Objectives: The study reported herein tested the effectiveness of a nurse-led, needs-based psycho-education program for Chinese patients with first-onset mental illness over a 6-month follow-up.Methods: A randomized controlled trial was conducted with 96 families of Chinese patients with schizophrenia newly referred to one outpatient clinic in Hong Kong. They were randomly assigned to either the nurse-led psycho-education program or usual outpatient care (both n=48). The patients' mental health, illness insight, self-efficacy, services utilization, and hospitalization rates were measured at recruitment and at one week and six months postintervention. Results:The patients in the psycho-education program reported significantly greater improvements in mental health, insights into treatment and illness, and hospitalization rates over the 6-month follow-up, when compared with those who received usual care. Conclusions:The findings provide evidence that the needs-based psycho-education program can improve the health conditions and treatment insights of Chinese out-patients with firstonset mental illness.

A randomized controlled clinical trial of a nurse-led structured psychosocial intervention program for people with first-onset mental illness in psychiatric outpatient clinics

“…The Chinese version used in this study has satisfactory internal consistency and good inter-rater reliability (Chien and Wong, 2007;Chien and Leung, 2013). …”

“…The structured programme was modified from interventions previously tested by the research team (Clarke et al, 2002;Yung et al, 2003;Chien et al, 2012;Chien and Leung, 2013;Chien and Thompson, 2014), and from adherence therapy for people with psychotic disorders (Gray et al, 2010).…”

“…This can result in delays of four to 12 weeks for service users to receive their first psychiatric consultation and/or subsequent treatment (Aron et al, 2009;Hospital Authority, Hong Kong, 2013). In Hong Kong the period of waiting time is determined by the urgency or priority of care established by initial mental health assessments conducted in outpatient clinics (Chien and Leung, 2013) and therefore patients not deemed as being at significant risk often face considerable delays in accessing psychiatric treatment.…”

“…A similar encouraging pilot study (Chien and Leung, 2013) tested the effects and feasibility of a nurse-led, needs-based psycho-education program for first-onset Chinese schizophrenia sufferers and their families in Hong Kong with a six-month follow-up. The 48 participants in the intervention group reported statistically significant reductions in psychopathology, improved attitudes toward their illness and reduced re-hospitalization rates, when compared to those patients receiving treatment as usual.…”

“…In this study we have built on our earlier work (Chien et al, 2012;Chien and Leung, 2013) and robustly tested a structured psychosocial intervention program using a similar combination of clinical approaches in a larger sample size of people who need to access immediate support. We decided to include patients in this study that had been newly referred with acute psychotic or affective symptoms but who had yet to receive an established psychiatric diagnosis.…”