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Behavioral program led to weight loss in patients with mental illness
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Behavioral weight-loss programs that provided nutritional messages and counseling with regular exercise led to significant weight loss among patients with severe mental illness, according to data from a new study.
According to researchers, it is established that several psychotropic medications administered to patients who require long-term symptom control can lead to weight gain. Although lifestyle changes can inhibit this effect, researchers have found that patients with severe mental illness such as schizophrenia may have difficulty adhering to such an intervention.
“We sought to dispel the perception that lifestyle programs don’t work in this population,” study researcher Gail L. Daumit, MD, MHS, an associate professor of general internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a press release. “There’s this really important need to find ways to help this population be healthier and lose weight. We brought a weight-loss program to them, tailored to the needs of people with serious mental illness. And we were successful.”
Daumit and colleagues enrolled overweight or obese adults (n=291) from 10 community psychiatric rehabilitation outpatient programs and randomly assigned them to an intervention or control group. Weight was measured at months 6, 12 and 18.
According to data, 58.1% of patients randomly assigned had a diagnosis of schizophrenia or a schizoaffective disorder, 22% were diagnosed with bipolar disorder and 12% were diagnosed with major depression. At baseline, mean BMI was 36.3 and mean weight was 102.7 kg, researchers wrote.
Of the 291 patients, data on weight were available for 279 of them at 18 months. The researchers wrote that weight loss among patients in the intervention group increased during the 18-month period, which was significantly different compared with the control group at each follow-up visit.
Moreover, the mean between-group difference was −3.2 kg (P=.002) at 18 months, and 37.8% of the patients in the intervention group lost 5% or more of their baseline weight, compared with 22.7% of controls (P=.009), according to data.
“This population is often stigmatized,” Daumit said. “This study’s findings should help people think differently about people with serious mental illness. Our results provide clear evidence that this population can make healthy lifestyle changes and achieve weight loss.”
Disclosure: See the study for a full list of financial disclosures.
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