Effectiveness of Home-Care Approach onTreatment Outcomes in Newly Discharged Bipolar-I-patients: A Randomized Control Trial Study

Abstract

Background and aim: Home-Visit is a recently growing approach for patients with chronic mental health problems. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of this approach in some therapeutic factors in the patients with BID. Material and Methods: In this randomized control trial study, among bipolar I patients discharged from Ghods Psychiatric Hospital in Sanandaj, those who met our inclusion criteria, after informed consent, randomly assigned into intervention and control groups. The evaluators were unaware of the patients' groups. The intervention group received 1-year intervention of home-care services, whereas the control group doesn't receive any intervention, except for their pharmacological treatment. Hamilton-Depression-Rating Scale and Young-Mania-Rating-Scale were used to record possible changes during the steps of our study (before, 6-months and 12-months after intervention). Data were analyzed using SPSS. Results: Our study included 26 patients (19 men, 7 women). 13 assigned to intervention group (Mean age= 36.15, SD=15.04), and 13 assigned to control group (Mean age=34.92, SD=5.15), which did not show any significant difference at the baseline (T=.279, p= .783). The results implied that the intervention group had significant decrease in all of the three variables, including frequency of hospitalization (p=0/001), mania (p=0/002), and depression (p=0/006), compared to the control group. These changes remained the same during the one year follow-up period. Conclusion: Results showed that home-visit was effective in, decreasing the severity of the symptoms, frequency and length of hospital stay in BID patients. It seems possible that increased length of interventions can lead to better outcomes.

Keywords

• bipolar-i disorder
• home-care
• severity of symptom
• hospitalization.