Psychological intervention

About: Psychological intervention is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 82654 publications have been published within this topic receiving 2608356 citations.

Promoting a culture of safety as a patient safety strategy: a systematic review.

Abstract: Developing a culture of safety is a core element of many efforts to improve patient safety and care quality. This systematic review identifies and assesses interventions used to promote safety culture or climate in acute care settings. The authors searched MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Cochrane, and EMBASE to identify relevant English-language studies published from January 2000 to October 2012. They selected studies that targeted health care workers practicing in inpatient settings and included data about change in patient safety culture or climate after a targeted intervention. Two raters independently screened 3679 abstracts (which yielded 33 eligible studies in 35 articles), extracted study data, and rated study quality and strength of evidence. Eight studies included executive walk rounds or interdisciplinary rounds; 8 evaluated multicomponent, unit-based interventions; and 20 included team training or communication initiatives. Twenty-nine studies reported some improvement in safety culture or patient outcomes, but measured outcomes were highly heterogeneous. Strength of evidence was low, and most studies were pre-post evaluations of low to moderate quality. Within these limits, evidence suggests that interventions can improve perceptions of safety culture and potentially reduce patient harm.

Improving mental health literacy as a strategy to facilitate early intervention for mental disorders.

Abstract: Good mental health literacy in young people and their key helpers may lead to better outcomes for those with mental disorders, either by facilitating early help-seeking by young people themselves, or by helping adults to identify early signs of mental disorders and seek help on their behalf. Few interventions to improve mental health literacy of young people and their helpers have been evaluated, and even fewer have been well evaluated. There are four categories of interventions to improve mental health literacy: whole-of-community campaigns; community campaigns aimed at a youth audience; school-based interventions teaching help-seeking skills, mental health literacy, or resilience; and programs training individuals to better intervene in a mental health crisis. The effectiveness of future interventions could be enhanced by using specific health promotion models to guide their development.

Peer Support Among Individuals with Severe Mental Illness

Abstract: This article reviews the history and potential effectiveness of peer support among persons with severe mental illness. Following a historical overview, we describe the three primary forms of peer support that have been developed to date by and for this population, and examine the existing empirical evidence of the feasibility, effectiveness, and utilization of each of these approaches in contributing to the recovery of individuals with psychiatric disabiliies. These three forms are (1) naturally occumng mutual support groups, (2) consumer-run senices, and (3) the employment of consumers as providers within clinical and rehabilitative settings. Existing studies of mutual support groups suggest that they may improve symptoms, promote larger social networkr, and enhance quality of life. This research is largely from uncontrolled studies, however, and will need to be evaluated further using prospective, controlled designs. Consumer-run services and the use of consumers as providers promise to broaden the access of individuals with psychiatric disabilities to peer support, but research on these more recent developments is only preliminary and largely limited to demonstrations of their feasibility. We discuss issues entailed in participating in peer support for this population, and then close with a discussion of the implications for future policy, research, and practice.

Enduring effects for cognitive behavior therapy in the treatment of depression and anxiety.

Abstract: Recent studies suggest that cognitive and behavioral interventions have enduring effects that reduce risk for subsequent symptom return following treatment termination. These enduring effects have been most clearly demonstrated with respect to depression and the anxiety disorders. It remains unclear whether these effects are a consequence of the amelioration of the causal processes that generate risk or the introduction of compensatory strategies that offset them and whether these effects reflect the mobilization of cognitive or other mechanisms. No such enduring effects have been observed for the psychoactive medications, which appear to be largely palliative in nature. Other psychosocial interventions remain largely untested, although claims that they produce lasting change have long been made. Whether such enduring effects extend to other disorders remains to be seen, but the capacity to reduce risk following treatment termination is one of the major benefits provided by the cognitive and behavioral interventions with respect to the treatment of depression and the anxiety disorders.