The effects and determinants of exercise participation in first-episode psychosis: a qualitative study

Abstract

BackgroundPrevious qualitative studies have found that exercise may facilitate symptomatic and functional recovery in people with long-term schizophrenia. This study examined the perceived effects of exercise as experienced by people in the early stages of psychosis, and explored which aspects of an exercise intervention facilitated or hindered their engagement.MethodsNineteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with early intervention service users who had participated in a 10-week exercise intervention. Interviews discussed people’s incentives and barriers to exercise, short- and long-term effects, and opinions on optimal interventions. A thematic analysis was applied to determine the prevailing themes.ResultsThe intervention was perceived as beneficial and engaging for participants. The main themes were (a) exercise alleviating psychiatric symptoms, (b) improved self-perceptions following exercise, and (c) factors determining exercise participation, with three respective sub-themes for each.ConclusionsParticipants explained how exercise had improved their mental health, improved their confidence and given them a sense of achievement. Autonomy and social support were identified as critical factors for effectively engaging people with first-episode psychosis in moderate-to-vigorous exercise. Implementing such programs in early intervention services may lead to better physical health, symptom management and social functioning among service users.Trial registrationCurrent Controlled Trials ISRCTN09150095. Registered 10 December 2013.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12888-016-0751-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Effects of Aerobic Exercise on Patients with Mental Illness in a Veterans Inpatient Psychiatric Unit: A Review of the Literature

“…However, the articles were found to be a collection of different methods and designs. Designs ranging from qualitative studies (Firth et al, 2016;McArdle, McGale, & Gaffney, 2012) to quantitative (Bonsaksen & Lerdal, 2012;Oretel-Knochel et al, 2014;Pfaff et al, 2014;Powers et al, 2015;Strassnig et al, 2015;Subramaniapillai et al, 2016;Toups et al, 2017) and a mix-method design (Browne, Mihas, & Penn, 2016). Methods found were exploratory (Bonsaksen & Lerdal, 2012;Browne et al, 2016;Firth et al, 2016), experimental (Oretel-Knochel et al, 2014;Strassnig et al, 2015;Toups et al, 2017), ethnographic (McArdle et al, 2012, prospective (Pfaff et al, 2014), pilot (Powers et al, 2015), and cross-sectional (Bonsaksen & Lerdal, 2012;Subramaniapillai et al, 2016).…”

“…Another theme found is symptom severity (Bonsaksen & Lerdal, 2012;Firth et al, 2016;McArdle et al, 2012;Pfaff et al, 2014;Powers et al, 2015) and exercise was effective in reducing mental illness symptom severity in three studies (Firth et al, 2016;McArdle., 2012;Powers et al, 2015). Cognitive ability was a predominant sub-theme that was found as well and effectively treated with exercise (Oretel-Knochel et al, 2014;Strassnig et al, 2015).…”

“…Six of the articles were related to depression and MDD (Bonsaksen & Lerdal, 2012;Browne et al, 2016;McArdle et al, 2012;Oretel-Knochel et al, 2014;Pfaff et al, 2014;Toups et al, 2017) and one PTSD (Powers et al, 2015). Exercise as an intervention was found to be beneficial in six studies for treating mental illnesses (Firth et al, 2016;McArdle et al, 2012;Oretel-Knochel et al, 2014;Powers et al, 2015;Strassnig et al, 2015;Toups et al, 2017) along with other related subthemes.…”

“…Studies were conducted in different facilities. Some settings were inpatient based on a psychiatric unit (Bonsaksen & Lerdal, 2012;Oretel-Knochel et al, 2014), outpatient (Browne et al, 2016;Firth et al, 2016;Subramaniapillai et al, 2016;Toups et al, 2017), physical training facilities (McArdle et al, 2012;Strassnig et al, 2015), home-based (Pfaff et al, 2014), and other settings otherwise not noted or vague in description (Powers et al, 2015). While the samples were not vague, there were a variety of sample sizes and diagnoses that were included.…”

“…Studies were based in Norway (Bonsaksen & Lerdal, 2012), United States (Brown et al, 2015;Powers et al, 2015;Strassnig et al, 2015;Toups et al, 2017), Canada (Subramaniapillai et al, 2016), Australia (Pfaff et al, 2014), Germany (Oretel-Knochel et al, 2014), Ireland (McArdle et al, 2012), and the United Kingdom (Firth et al, 2016). Studies were conducted in different facilities.…”