Depression and Education as Predicting Factors for Completion of a Behavioral Medicine Intervention in a Mind/Body Medicine Clinic

Abstract

The authors compared characteristics of 1,012 outpatients completing a 10-week behavioral medicine intervention with 300 outpatients who dropped out. They administered the Symptom Checklist-90 Revised (SCL-90R) before and after the program. Patients who completed the treatment, compared with dropouts, tended to be more highly educated, married, and gainfully employed. Their pretreatment scores on the SCL-90R were significantly lower than those of the dropouts on somatization, depression, and obsessive-compulsive scales and on the global severity index. Multiple logistic regression analysis indicated that lower depression and higher education marked the group who completed the intervention in contrast to the dropouts. After the intervention, all of the SCL-90R scores were significantly lower among patients who completed the treatment. Pre- to postintervention score changes were not significantly associated with the number of sessions attended. The findings suggest that the intervention had salutary effects in patients with mind/body distress and that its effectiveness was not diminished by a few absences. Depressed or less educated patients might benefit from preparatory interventions or from a modified approach to their treatment.

Non-dieting group interventions for overweight and obese women: what predicts non-completion and does completion improve outcomes?

“…It is possible that education level is a marker of socioeconomic status in the present study. Other researchers have reported that socio-economic status is predictive of attendance at programmes focused on elicitation of the relaxation response (22) . It is possible that lower socio-economic status may negatively influence attendance owing to factors such as lack of childcare, employment situation (e.g.…”

“…Findings from the Harvard Medical Symptom Reduction programme have suggested that baseline depression and other psychological distress measures are lower among completers than among non-completers (22,24,25) . Thus we were surprised to observe that pre-treatment SCL-90-R depression and anxiety scores did not significantly differentiate completers from non-completers.…”

“…The fifty-two-item Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II (HPLP-II) (27) was used to assess the frequency with which participants engaged in a variety of lifestyle behaviours and has been used in evaluations of the Harvard Mind/ Body Medical Institute's Medical Symptom Reduction programme (22,25) . Results of three subscales from the HPLP-II (stress management, physical activity and healthy nutrition-related behaviours) are presented.…”

“…Rapoport et al (12) reported significantly higher binge eating, but no significant BMI, depression or demographic differences in women who attended fewer than seven out of ten sessions compared with those who attended at least seven sessions. In an evaluation of a group intervention focused on training in techniques for eliciting the relaxation response, participants who attended at least seven of ten sessions had lower levels of psychological distress, were more highly educated and more likely to be married and gainfully employed at baseline than those who attended fewer than seven sessions (22) . Even in group interventions with a clear weight-loss focus, predictors of completion are seldom reported (23) .…”

Relationship between Smoking and Major Depression in a Japanese Workplace

“…The following 12 common somatic symptoms were selected for analyses based on our previous study 6) : fatigue, headache, insomnia, back pain, abdominal pain, joint pain, dizziness, chest pain, constipation, palpitation, nausea, and shortness of breath. Symptoms occurring once a week or more were defined as positive, and the total somatic symptom count (0-12) was calculated by summing up the number of symptoms counted as positive 7) . As cross-sectional study, chi-square test was done to find differences in the prevalence of major depression among the smoking status groups.…”