Is Mindfulness-Based Intervention a Feasible Treatment for Patients with Psychotic Spectrum Disorders? A Pilot Study

Mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) can be considered a useful strategy for coping with psychotic experiences, helping patients to respond differently to psychotic symptoms with a more conscious acceptance of thoughts, emotions and sensations. The purpose of this study was to examine the feasibility and potential clinical utility of a mindfulness-based intervention.

Twenty outpatients from a Mental Health Centre in Bari approached to participate in this study. Among the approached participants, 15 agreed to participate and provided data at pretreatment, among them only 10 completed the treatment protocol and provided data after the treatment. Patients were offered mindfulness-based psychoeducation intervention protocol (MBPP) proposed by Chien and Lee (2013). The structure of the program consisted of 8-week 120 min weekly group sessions. Outcome assessments were conducted at recruitment (time 0) and after mindfulness-based psychoeducation program (time 1). In order to compare scores at different times (T0 and T1), paired T-test was used, if normal distribution, or Exact Wilcoxon signed rank test; normal distribution was analyzed using Shapiro-Wilk test.

The results obtained after the administration of the following rating scales Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), Drug attitude Inventory (DAI-10), Recovery Assessment Scale (RAS), Schedule for the assessment of the insight (SAI), Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) show score variations at two times. MAAS and SAI show a significant increase at time 1 compared to time 0.

The data obtained with this study highlight the feasibility of mindfulness-based interventions (MBI) in psychotic spectrum disorders in Community Mental Health Services. Our study underline furthermore the opportunity of mindfulness-based interventions to increase insight in a recovery-oriented rehabilitation process.