Functioning Management & Recovery - Resource Group, a psychoeducational intervention to improve empowerment of people...

Functioning Management and Recovery with the Resource Group (FM&R-GR) is a standardized Psychoeducational Intervention elaborated to improve functioning and empowerment of people with Severe Mental Illness (SMI) living in the community. The aim of this study is to prove its efficacy by the primary and secondary outcomes.

60 patients with SMI were recruited in 5 day-centers (North and South Italy) randomly assigned into 2 groups (Experimental vs Control); patients underwent a multicenter follow-up study with a two time-point evaluation (t0, pre-treatment and t1, 12 months). A highly structured FM&R-GR was used in the Experimental Group (EG), whereas a less structured manual was used in the Control Group (CG). At each time point, Social Functioning, Empowerment and Distress, were assessed as primary outcome; furthermore, Psychopathological Status, Cognitive Functioning, and Cognitive Flexibility were assessed as secondary outcome.

Fifty-nine individuals out of 60 (98.3%) started the study randomly allocated in the EG vs CG. In the EG, 19 people (32.2%) were affected by schizophrenia, 9 (15.2%) by bipolar I disorder with psychotic symptoms and 2 (3.4%) by personality disorders according to DSM-5-TR started the study; in the CG there were respectively 20 (33.9%), 6 (10.2%) and 3 (5.1%). Forty-eight patients, 27 in the EG (56.3%) and 21 in the CG (43.75) completed the study. The total scores of NEL, Distress (p<0.001), and PSPS (p<0.05) showed a statistically significant improvement. The improvement of the other variables in the EG (BPRS, BANS and MFPT) was not statistically significant.

After 1 year follow-up these results showed improvement in all variables of primary and secondary outcomes, with great statistically significant difference between the two groups for the empowerment, functioning and distress. Furthermore, the pre-post difference in the Experimental Group was statistically significant for all variables with the exception of cognitive flexibility, while in the CG only for the RBANS. Overall, a remarkable impact of this psychoeducational structured intervention was observed on the primary outcome variables.