The importance of informal caregivers for persons with severe mental illness has been demonstrated. However, this role may cause a high care burden that considerably affects caregiver health. The ...Ensemble program is a five-session brief individual intervention designed to support informal caregivers. This trial aimed to assess the efficacy of the program versus SAU (support as usual) for participants with a high care burden.
A single-center randomized controlled trial including 149 participants was conducted. Caregivers in the intervention arm participated in the Ensemble program. The effects of the intervention were assessed using mixed models for repeated measures analysis of variance on improvements in informal caregivers' psychological health status, optimism levels, burden scores, and quality of life at three time points (T0 = pretest; T1 = posttest at 2 months, and T2 = follow-up at 4 months).
Analysis of the Global Psychological Index showed no significant effect at the two endpoints in favor of the Ensemble group. However, the Brief Symptom Inventory-Positive Symptom Distress Index was significantly lower at the two-month follow-up. A significant reduction in burden on the Zarit Burden Interview was observed post-intervention, along with an increase in optimism levels on the Life Orientation Test-Revised at follow-up in the Ensemble group. No significant differences were observed in quality of life. Clinical improvements in both psychological health status and burden levels were also identified.
The Ensemble program offers an inclusive approach based on a recovery perspective that significantly reduces symptom distress and burden and increases optimism among informal caregivers.
: https://clinicaltrials.gov/, NCT04020497.
The author was the founder and secretary pro-tem of the Bad Poets Society at Princeton Theological Seminary. This distinction does not appear on his official resume. The Society did not have meetings ...but it had a newsletter that came out several times a year comprised of bad poetry written by members of the faculty and staff. These poetic works included reflections on institutional matters. This article contains bad poetry by the author relating to such matters. This poetry illustrates Sigmund Freud's (Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Norton, New York, 1960) view of humor as saving in the expenditure of painful emotions, costly inhibitions, and difficult thinking. The parasitical nature of bad poetry is also noted and illustrated with the author's own poems.
There often seems to be only one constant in life – change! And change comes in all sizes, shapes, and colors. Life changes can be so major that they overwhelm us, or so minor as to be hardly ...noticeable. They can be very subtle or dramatic, happy or sad, welcomed or feared. Change can be a cause for celebration or sorrow. Change can provide new opportunities to reach for our greatest potential, or change can diminish our capacities and cause us to redefine ourselves. Change sometimes brings us face to face with the prospect of death – our own or a loved one’s. Change can take many forms:
