Is a Holistic Health Practice Program Effective to Promote Personal Growth in Persons with Serious Mental Illness – A Pilot Study

Self-help groups (SHG) have been found to be effective in enhancing psychiatric rehabilitation. A Holistic Health Practice Program (HHPP) was developed in which all recovery components are covered. It has been conducted on a group of student nurses and was found to be effective in promoting holistic health, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. But the question arises if it is also effective when conducted on the members of the SHG comprising persons with serious mental illness.

This study aimed to explore the holistic health status of the members of the SHG and investigate whether the HHPP is effective for the personal growth of members of the SHG, including persons with serious mental illness and trained lay persons as volunteers in the group.

A pre- and post-test group approach was adopted in this study. Group members were invited to join an HHPP, which consisted of 6 sessions held within 6 weeks, with one session weekly comprising 3 hours per session. Participants were asked to fill in a pre-test questionnaire before the program and a post-test questionnaire when they completed the program.

Results showed that among the 6 domains of the healthy lifestyle profile, participants scored the lowest in the physical activity of the physical domain, followed by the health responsibility of the psychological domain. Whereas, they scored the highest in the interpersonal relations of the social domain. The study also found no significant differences between the mean scores of the persons with serious mental illness and the volunteers. Besides, there were significantly positive increases in mean scores in the domains of physical activity, nutritional habits, spiritual growth, and the total scores of HPLP-II (P<0.05), as well as self-esteem (P<0.05) and self-efficacy (P<0.05) when comparing the pre-test and post-test results.

This study showed that the holistic health status of persons with serious mental illness is the same as that of the general population. It also demonstrated that the Holistic Health Practice Program is effective in promoting holistic health, self-esteem, and self-efficacy among the persons with serious mental illness and the volunteers.