Does Concentrated Exposure Treatment for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Improve Insomnia Symptoms? Results From a Randomized Controlled Trial

Concentrated transdiagnostic and cross-disciplinary micro-choice based group treatment for patients with depression and with anxiety leads to lasting improvements after 12 months: a pilot study

BACKGROUND

A concentrated transdiagnostic and micro choice-based group treatment for patients with depression and anxiety has previously shown to yield significant reduction in symptoms and increased level of functioning from pre to 3-month follow-up. In the present study, we report the results after 12 months follow-up.

METHODS

This was a non-randomized clinical intervention pilot study, conducted in line with a published protocol. Sixty-seven consecutively referred patients, aged 19-47 (mean age 32.5, SD = 8.0) were included and completed treatment. All had a severity of their problems that entitled them to care in the specialist public mental health care. Self-reported age at onset of symptoms was 17.6 (SD = 7.9) years. Mean number of prior treatment courses was 3.5 (SD = 3.3; range 0-20). The main objective was to assess the treatment effectiveness by questionnaires measuring relevant symptoms at pre-treatment, 7 days-, 3 months-, 6 months- and at 12-months follow-up.

RESULTS

Validated measures of functional impairment (WSAS), depression (PHQ9), anxiety (GAD7), worry (PSWQ), fatigue (CFQ), insomnia (BIS) and illness perception (BIPQ) improved significantly (p < .0005) from before treatment to 12 months follow-up, yielding mostly large to extremely large effect sizes (0.89-3.68), whereas some moderate (0.60-0.76). After 12 months, 74% report an overall improvement in problems related to anxiety and depression. Utilization of specialist, public and private mental health care was reported as nonexistent or had decreased for 70% of the patients at 12-month follow up.

CONCLUSIONS

The concentrated, micro-choice based group treatment approach yielded a highly clinically significant reduction in a wide range of symptoms already one week after treatment, and the positive results persisted at 12-month follow-up.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT05234281, first posted date 10/02/2022.

The effect of mindfulness training on stress and sleep quality of postmenopausal women: A systematic review and meta-analysis

INTRODUCTION

Mindfulness is an effective method for empowering women to cope with menopausal changes. This study aimed to determine the effect of mindfulness training on stress and sleep quality in postmenopausal women.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

English (PubMed, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science, and CINHAL) and Persian (SID, Magiran) databases were searched until 25 June 2022, using the free and MeSH keywords included Mindfulness and Menopause. The quality of the published papers was evaluated using Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions version 5.2.0. The meta-analysis was conducted in RevMan 5.3 and the results were reported with mean difference (95% confidence interval). The quality of evidence was assessed using the GRADE approach.

RESULTS

A total of 1206 records were obtained. After removing duplicate and non-eligible records, finally five articles were included in the systematic review and meta-analysis. The results indicated that sleep quality score (SMD = -1.44; 95% CI = -2.44 to -0.46; p = 0.004) and perceived stress score (MD = -4.21; 95% CI = -6.41 to -2.00; p = 0.0002) were significantly reduced in the mindfulness training group compared to control group.

CONCLUSION

Mindfulness training is associated with improving sleep quality and perceived stress (with a low quality of evidence) in postmenopausal women. Mental health and quality of life in postmenopausal women impressively affect the community health. Given the low quality of evidence of the studies in this field, randomized controlled trials with better methodologies are suggested.