Impact of a Brief Mindfulness Intervention on Psychiatric Consult Patients? Symptoms

Author Info

Dallas M. Ducar J. Kim Penberthy Malvika Venkataraman Sara Rizvi

Corresponding Author

J. Kim Penberthy
Department of Psychiatry & Neurobehavioral Sciences, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, VA, USA

A B S T R A C T

Psychiatric patients in the hospital suffer from stressors and challenges that may contribute to their hospitalization. They also suffer additional stressors related to being an inpatient. The psychiatric consultation liaison service of a hospital or health system is designed to respond to patients when stressors have accumulated, and patients are deemed to be at risk or when patients are suspected of having a psychiatric condition. This service provides necessary evaluation and treatment of patients who are acutely distressed, and often the focus is on diagnosing and stabilizing the patient and keeping them safe. Due to time constraints on medical residents, there is often no time for a professional to implement an appropriate and effective therapeutic intervention in the moment. We developed and conducted pilot testing of a brief mindfulness intervention for psychiatric consult patients that could be ordered by the consultation liaison physician or team and be implemented immediately by a trained nurse. This intervention consisted of offering a range of guided mindfulness techniques to the patient in real time response to patients and evaluated the impact on symptoms pre-and post-intervention. Results demonstrate significant improvements in self-reported anxiety, stress, uncomfortable thoughts, and pain after the intervention. Other symptoms of low mood, restlessness, and body tension were not significantly improved post intervention. We briefly discuss the intervention, its impact and potential reasons for the mixed findings

Article Info

Article Type

Research Article

Publication history

Received: Sat 09, Jun 2018
Accepted: Thu 21, Jun 2018
Published: Mon 25, Jun 2018

Copyright

© 2023 J. Kim Penberthy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.PDR.2018.10.005