Adding quality to day centre activities for people with psychiatric disabilities: Staff perceptions of an intervention.

To evaluate an intervention aimed at enriching day centres for people with psychiatric disabilities by exploring staff experiences from developing and implementing the intervention

Social interaction among people with psychiatric disabilities - Does attending a day centre matter?

Background:Engaging in social interaction has, for people with psychiatric disabilities, been shown to enhance well-being and the experience of meaning and to generally prevent the worsening of mental illness.Aim:The aim of the study was to investigate how day centre attendees differed from non-attendees regarding different aspects of social interaction and to investigate how occupational factors, including day centre attendance, and previously known predictors were related to social interaction in the study sample as a whole.Methods:A total of 93 day centre attendees and 82 non-attendees with psychiatric disabilities were examined regarding social interaction, subjective perception of occupation, activity level, sense of self-mastery and socio-demographic and clinical variables. Data were analysed with non-parametric statistics, mainly logistic regression.Results:Social support was mainly provided by informal caregivers such as family members. The day centre attendees had more social relations but did not experience better quality or closeness in their relationships than non-attendees. Important factors for social interaction were subjective perceptions of daily occupation, being married/cohabiting, self-mastery and severity of psychiatric symptoms.Conclusion:Alternative ways of enhancing social interactions in the community is needed, targeting the group’s feeling of satisfaction and value in daily life together with self-mastery

Empowerment and occupational engagement among people with psychiatric disabilities.

Abstract Background: Empowerment is essential in the rehabilitation process for people with psychiatric disabilities and knowledge about factors that may play a key role within this process would be valuable for further development of the day centre services. Objective: The present study investigates day centre attendees' perceptions of empowerment. The aim was to investigate which factors show the strongest relationships to empowerment when considering occupational engagement, client satisfaction with day centres, and health-related and socio-demographic factors as correlates. Methods: 123 Swedish day centre attendees participated in a cross-sectional study by completing questionnaires regarding empowerment and the targeted correlates. Data were analysed with non-parametric statistics. Results: Empowerment was shown to be significantly correlated with occupational engagement and client satisfaction and also with self-rated health and symptoms rated by a research assistant. The strongest indicator for belonging to the group with the highest ratings on empowerment was self-rated health, followed by occupational engagement and symptom severity. Implications: Occupational engagement added to the beneficial influence of self-rated health on empowerment. Enabling occupational engagement in meaningful activities and providing occupations that can generate client satisfaction is an important focus for day centres in order to assist the attendees' rehabilitation process so that it promotes empowerment

Effectiveness of an intervention to improve day centre services for people with psychiatric disabilities.

Day centres for people with psychiatric disabilities need to be evaluated for effectiveness in order to provide the best possible support. This study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of a tailor-made intervention to improve day centre services for people with psychiatric disabilities

Measuring perceived meaningfulness in day centres for persons with mental illness

Rationale: As support in leading a meaningful and active life, a person with mental illness is often given the opportunity to attend a day centre. However, few studies have investigated the meaningfulness perceived by the person visiting a day centre. For such a purpose, a self-report instrument was developed. Aims: To explore whether perceived meaningfulness, as expressed in the recently developed instrument Evaluation of Perceived Meaning in Day Centers (EPM-DC), could be viewed as one dimension and also to investigate the psychometric properties of this instrument. Methods: Persons with mental illness attending five day centres in Sweden participated and completed the questionnaire. The data were analysed by Rasch analysis. Major findings: The study showed that the concept captured in the instrument could be viewed as unidimensional and the result gave preliminary evidence for sound psychometric properties. Principal conclusion: The results indicate promising signs of validity and reliability, but the suitability of self-reporting may be questioned

Spending my time- Time use and meaningfulness in daily occupations as perceived by people with persistent mental illness

Engagement in daily occupations, especially those perceived as meaningful, is essential for health and well-being. According to evaluation reports, many individuals with persistent mental illness seem to lack meaningful everyday occupations. The aim of this thesis was to investigate possible relationships between occupation, operationalised as time use and daily rhythm in daily activities, among individuals with persistent mental illness and relationships to different aspects of well-being, and identify sociodemographic and clinical risk factors for any imbalance in daily activities. A further aim was to investigate perceived meaningfulness in daily occupations, with a specific focus on work. The thesis is based on four studies. Studies I-III are based on a randomised sample of 103 participants from a psychiatric outpatient unit, and Study IV included 12 participants that were interviewed about perceived meaningfulness in their work. The results showed that spending much time in activities in everyday life, especially in work and other productive activities, and having a beneficial daily rhythm were associated with several factors of well-being. Spending much time asleep, especially at daytime, was associated with worse well-being. Among the risk factors for imbalance in daily activities was having high levels of general symptoms, which explained most of the risk of spending short periods in work/education, having an abnormal time asleep and an adverse daily rhythm. Further, having a diagnosis of schizophrenia meant an increased risk of spending little time in daily activities. Being occupied per se, as well as having organised activities and routines, was perceived as meaningful and generated a feeling of occupational balance. Further, social life and a feeling of being needed by others was the aspect of meaningfulness most frequently reported in everyday life. Other aspects of meaningfulness in daily occupations were enjoyment, a sense of achievement and doing occupations to take care of oneself to maintain health. Work, in terms of employment, was perceived as meaningful since it had certain unique characteristics, gave structure to the day, a feeling of normality and acceptance, a balanced everyday life, and increased well-being. However, it was important that the demands at work and the individuals’ interests and skills were well matched. A tentative model was suggested, integrating these aspects of meaningfulness in work