Annemiek Schadé and Gerard van Grootheest
Objectives: HIV-infected patients suffer from both physical and mental health symptoms and treatment of both symptoms is important. The 8-week Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (henceforth MBCT) was originally developed for both mental and physical symptoms and is easy to implement. It is unknown, however, whether the addition of MBCT to psychiatric care as usual is effective in the long term and feasible for this group of patients. We measured depressive and anxiety symptoms, suicidal thoughts and fatigue in HIV-infected patients receiving psychiatric care as usual with or without MBCT, at intake and after one year.
Methods: The study was conducted at the outpatient clinic for HIV and Mental Health at GGZ inGeest in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, between March 2006 and September 2009. MBCT was offered as a group therapy in addition to individual care as usual to all (N=208) patients in their first year of psychiatric treatment.
Results: In the research period, 58 patients opted for the MBCT and 150 did not. Twenty patients did not complete the MBCT and questionnaires of both time points were available from 22 patients with and from 60 patients without MBCT. During their first year of psychiatric care, patients in both treatment groups showed significant improvement on depressive and anxiety symptoms, suicidal thoughts and fatigue.
Conclusion: Measured after one year, the addition of MBCT to psychiatric care as usual for HIV-infected patients had no measurable added effect on the treatment of depressive and anxiety symptoms, suicidal thoughts and fatigue. The present study was an explorative study to investigate the role of additional MBCT to psychiatric care as usual. It seems that general addition of MBCT is not feasible in this group of patients. However, further research, for example in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) is necessary to confirm the resu
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