Staff development, anxiety and relaxation techniques: a pilot study in an acute psychiatric inpatient setting

Psychiatric inpatients often complain of problems with anxiety, but a computerised search of the nursing literature failed to find any publications detailing nurse-led, individual or group anxiety management work specifically aimed at psychiatric inpatient populations. In the UK, psychiatric inpatient populations are characterized by people with clinical diagnoses of schizophrenia and major affective and personality disorders. This is a very different population from that treated in the vast majority of published trials of cognitive and other approaches to anxiety management. A pilot study was conducted on four psychiatric acute admission wards to determine the practicality of treating a convenience sample of psychiatric inpatients with self-reported anxiety problems along broadly cognitive lines. Patients attended a course of three anxiety management groups (AMGs) run by nurses and were given homework and other exercises to complete. Patients reported significant reductions in anxiety after completion of the treatment. The AMGs were facilitated by staff nurses under the supervision of a clinical nurse specialist, and not by fully trained therapists as in most treatment studies relating to anxiety. Further studies, particularly randomized controlled trials, are needed to explore the efficacy and practicality of nurses delivering brief psychological interventions to psychiatric inpatients.