2023-08-29 12:45:32
Schizophrenia is a chronic and complex neuropsychiatric disorder that affects approximately 24 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. This disease has a significant impact on the quality of life of the people affected and their families, in addition to the stigma and discrimination of society.
A study carried out by Sara Maldonado-Martin and Mikel Tous-Espelosin from the GIKAFIT group (Gizartea, Kirola eta Ariketa Fisikoa Ikerkuntza Taldea) of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), in collaboration with the Álava Psychiatric Hospital and the The University of Deusto, in the Basque Country, Spain, has aimed to investigate the effect of an adjuvant program of physical exercise outside the hospital as a complement to the usual treatment in people with schizophrenia. It was intended to observe if there were improvements in overall health, addressing the lack of focus on homogeneous groups of patients and giving people with schizophrenia a voice to learn about their subjective experiences. Tous-Espelosin explains that “it has been observed that physical exercise in different vulnerable populations is having very beneficial effects on health”, and adds that “not only does it improve the physical part, but it can also improve other aspects of the disease”. .
“Schizophrenia has three types of symptoms: positive, negative and cognitive,” explains Tous-Espelosin. “The positives can be delusions or hallucinations and can usually be treated with medication. For negative symptoms (sadness, lack of energy, apathy) there is no medication that can treat them, but thanks to physical exercise, this type of symptomatology could be improved. Physical exercise is like a brain modulator that increases the expression of certain proteins and improves brain plasticity itself, that is, functional and structural adaptations of the brain are produced that are associated with improvements in learning, memory, and function. cognitive”.
Mikel Tous-Espelosin and Sara Maldonado-Martin. (Photo: Nuria González, UPV/EHU)
A concurrent exercise program
Participants diagnosed with schizophrenia received an intensive concurrent physical exercise program (training combining an aerobic part and a strength and resistance circuit) out of hospital for five months, three times a week. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured individual interviews, organized and analyzed through a thematic analysis. “Both before and after doing the physical exercise we did an interview of approximately 35 minutes. In it we asked them about their experience in relation to physical exercise in the past, and whether or not they continued to do physical exercise because of the disease. When they started the program, we asked them about their feelings, and once it was over, what benefits they felt”, explains the UPV/EHU researcher.
The findings of this research support the strategic use of physical exercise as part of the treatment and maintenance of holistic health in people with schizophrenia. “Physical exercise can be an adjuvant treatment —adds the researcher—, it can help the pharmacological treatment itself”. The results show that the patients believe that the physical exercise program outside the hospital could be a highly accepted and beneficial complement to their usual treatment, and show that physical exercise has helped them disconnect their minds from their problems. “This study is a real characterization of what happens to them and what people with schizophrenia feel when they perform physical exercise correctly. Ideally, psychiatric hospitals should have a physical-sports educator with whom they could carry out a correctly designed and supervised physical exercise program. For this reason, we would like to thank the Álava Psychiatric Hospital for trusting in our figure”, he concludes.
El estudio se titula “’It Helped Me to Disconnect My Mind from the Problems’: The Subjective Experiences of People with Schizophrenia Taking Part in a Concurrent Exercise Program”. Y se ha publicado en la revista académica Issues in Mental Health Nursing. (Fuente: UPV/EHU)
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