Illness Management and Recovery- a Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial Within a Forensic Mental Inpatient Setting

Summary

The purpose of the study is to investigate the effects of a psychoeducational intervention program, Illness Management and Recovery (henceforth abbreviated as IMR), when administered to inpatient forensic mental health patients. IMR is a treatment program that can be administered in both a group and an individual format. It is designed for persons suffering from severe mental health problems and has two principal aims: 1. promoting participants´ capacity to manage and alleviate symptoms and functional impairment and 2. helping participants in formulating and attaining subjectively meaningful recovery goals. Forensic mental health inpatients receiving this treatment will be compared to patients who receive treatment as usual on a variety of outcome measures, such as clinician and self-rated levels of symptoms, function and perceived levels of hope. Furthermore, clinicians' experiences of working with the intervention will be investigated using a structured questionnaire regarding implementation processes and through an interview protocol.

The study has 3 objectives:

1. Investigating the effects of the treatment on the chosen outcome measures.
2. Investigating the effects of potential moderators on treatment outcome. These moderators include: pre-treatment functional status measured by self and informant report, neuropsychological performance and pre-admission indicators of presence of criminogenic risk factors and everyday functioning.
3. Investigating the experiences of staff working with the intervention, through the lense of Normalization Process Theory.

Conditions

• Psychotic Disorders
• Forensic Psychology
• Forensic Nursing
• Antisocial Personality Disorder
• Substance Use Disorders

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Illness Management and Recovery treatment programme

The Illness Management and Recovery treatment programme is a psychosocial treatment aimed at attaining illness management skills and promoting a sense of personal recovery amongst patients with serious mental illness. The original treatment protocol has been translated to Swedish and adapted to a forensic mental health setting. The treatment consists of ten chapters containing information and practical exercises relating to topics relevant for mental health and mental health recovery. These topics include medication use, stress reduction, problem solving, recovery goals and navigating the forensic mental health system. Participants are assigned practical homework and tasks to be completed outside of treatment sessions. Group sessions are conducted to present and discuss treatment material. Individual sessions are used to rehearse treatment content, personalize the treatment and review progress in achieving tasks agreed upon in the group setting.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Dalarna County Council, Sweden

  collaborator OTHER

• Karolinska Institutet

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Knut Sturidsson, PhD · Karolinska Institutet

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-10-01

Primary Completion

2024-02-01

Completion

2024-02-01

Countries

• Sweden

Study Locations