Moderate-to-Vigorous Intensity Physical Activity as a Tool for Severe Mental Illness Recuperation Process: Study Protocol for a Pragmatic Controlled Clinical Trial (+moviMENT)
Moderate-to-Vigorous Intensity Physical Activity as a Tool for Severe Mental Illness Recuperation Process: Study Protocol for a Pragmatic Controlled Clinical Trial (+moviMENT)
Twenty-five percent of the population worldwide will experience a severe mental illness during their lifetime (World Health Organization, 2017). These people present strong barriers to adhering to moderate and vigorous-intensity continuous training. It is fundamental to overcome these barriers for practicing moderate-to-vigorous physical activity by adding behavioural change techniques into physical activity interventions (Maurus et al., 2023), in order to design and implement sustainable interventions that empower people to engage in it.
The overall aims will be to evaluate the efficacy of +moviMENT, a 28-week intervention program, designed to increase MVPA time in patients with SMI, and to assess the effects of the program on a range of indicators, in comparison with a 'usual care' control group.
This is a pragmatic controlled clinical trial with intervention and control group, in which patients will be recruited from two different services from different cities. Patients who will meet the inclusion criteria (>16 years, severe mental illness diagnosis, not medical risk to practice MVPA, living in the community) from one service will be assigned to the intervention and those from the other to the control group. The intervention comprises 16 weeks of group based High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), with transition to individual community based Vigorous Intermittent Lifestyle Physical Activity (VILPA) over the next 12 weeks - for a total intervention period of 28 weeks. Primary outcomes measures (clinical and functional) and secondary (personal recovery, self-perception and device-measured fitness, physical activity and sedentary behaviour and experience) will be assessed at baseline and after 16, 28 and 40 weeks, after follow-up. Group differences in change scores will be assessed using linear mixed-effects models with time, group, and their interaction as fixed effects, accounting for within-subject correlations.