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Creating a Digital Psychoeducation Programme for bipolar disorder in the COVID-19 pandemic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2022
Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic profoundly affected delivery and accessibility of mental health care services at a time when most needed. The OPTIMA Mood Disorder Service, a specialist bipolar disorder service, adapted group psychoeducation programme for delivery on-line.
We report the feasibility of creating a digital psychoeducation programme.
The OPTIMA ten session group psychoeducation programme was converted into a ‘Digital’ intervention using video-conferencing. Sessions offered a range of key topics, derived from the initial Barcelona Group Psychoeducation Programme. At the time of writing, OPTIMA had fully completed two 10 session digital courses.
A total of 12 people (6 in each group) consented to be part of a service evaluation of the digital groups. Just over half of the participants were women (7/12; 58.3%) and one identified as being non-binary (8.3); remaining participants were men. Age of participants ranged from 25 years to 65 years (Mean=42.3; SD=13.1). Data showed a high level of engagement (77%) All participants reported some improvement with a mean Bipolar Self-Efficacy scale (BPSES) post-group score of 105.6 (SD=14.8). At group level, this change was not statistically significant (F (1, 15) = 0.71, p=0.41). At an individual level, two out of five showed a reliable change index >1.96.
Delivering a ‘digital’ group psychoeducation programme was possible due to careful planning and programme development. There was good uptake from service users suggesting it is a feasible approach with preliminary evidence of clinical benefit.
No significant relationships.
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- European Psychiatry , Volume 65 , Special Issue S1: Abstracts of the 30th European Congress of Psychiatry , June 2022 , pp. S569
- Creative Commons
- This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
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