Effect of psycho-education on quality of life and disability among persons with bipolar disorder: Randomized controlled trial

Pages: 461-466
Linu Sara George (Department of Fundamentals of Nursing, Manipal College of Nursing, Manipal, Manipal University, Manipal)
P.S.V.N. Sharma (Department of Psychiatry, Kasturba Hospital, Manipal)
Sreekumaran Nair (Department of Statistics, Manipal University Manipal)

Patients with Bipolar Disorder experience psychosocial impairment which can extent to all areas of functioning. Psychosocial interventions can play a major role in improving the overall functioning of the individual. The objective of the study was to determine the effect of psych-education on quality of life and disability among persons with Bipolar Disorder. The study was conducted among 50 persons with Bipolar Disorder between 20-60 years of age without any chronic illness in the Psychiatry wards of two hospitals in Udupi District, Karnataka. A randomized controlled trial with two group parallel design was used with a sample size of 50; 24 in experimental and 26 in control group. Four sessions of psycho-education was conducted for the patient in experimental group after the baseline assessment and the outcome was measured immediately after the intervention and at 1 month and 3 months. Repeated measure analysis of variance was used to find the effectiveness of psycho educative intervention on quality of life and disability. The difference obtained in the quality of life scores between the experimental and the control group was not significant (p=0.27). There was decrease in the disability scores of experimental group as compared to the control group but the change observed was very minimal (p=0.04).From the present study it was concluded that psycho-education is useful in the routine care of persons with Bipolar Disorder.