Therapeutic patient education: A solution to the treatment of obesity and metabolic syndrome in psychiatry

Abstract

Introduction/objectives

Obesity and overweight are major public health issues. Obesity is a risk factor associated with many non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, certain types of cancers, musculoskeletal disorders and cardiovascular, dermatological or gastroenterological diseases. Patients with severe psychiatric disorders have a higher risk of developing overweight or obesity than the general population. The risk of obesity in schizophrenics patients can be multiplied by a factor ranging from 2.8 to 3.5. Patients suffering from mood disorder have sightly lower risk of obesity, however we still consider a factor ranging from 1.2 to 1.5. This significant weight gain can be partly explained by medication.

Methods

The hospital centre Le Vinatier, in France, has developed a therapeutic patient education program in helping patients to self-manage their preventable disease. In order to tackle the multifaceted nature of obesity, the program used the expertise of many different professionals: general practitioners, dieticians, dentists, physical adapted education teachers, pharmacists, nurses and so on. This programme is provided for patients suffering from obesity or an overweight complicated by diabetes, or/and metabolic syndrome, and/or history of cardiovascular diseases or/and a failure of a dietary monitoring. The program includes individual care and collective workshops in nutrition, oral heath, body image, adapted physical education, and roundtable.

Results/conclusions

A retrospective study has already shown that this therapeutic patient education program, like others before, presented better results than dietary consultations. A prospective study is currently being carried out to validate these results in the long term and to demonstrate the benefit associated to this program.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.