Walking for Health: an Intervention to Increase Physical Activity and Reduce Sedentary Behaviour in People With SMI

People who have a severe mental illness can have poorer physical health and higher mortality rates than the general population. Their medications combined with low levels of physical activity and increased sedentary behaviour can general population and may help people with severe mental illness to be more active.

A previous feasibility study has been conducted in the UK in a large city with positive findings. The current study will be conducted in rural settings in Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland. The intervention will last 13 weeks. People with Severe Mental Illness will be randomly assigned into one of two groups. Both groups will get information on the benefits of physical activity. In addition, one group will be shown how to use a step counter to measure their steps, be invited to a weekly group walk, and meet their coach every 2 weeks contribute to this. Walking is a good way to increase physical activity in the to see how they are getting on and to support them.

The research team are interested in finding out how willing clinicians are to recruit people into the study, how willing people are to take part, do people then stick with the programme, and if not the reasons for people dropping out. Qualitative findings will explore whether participants feel they benefited from and enjoyed the programme. Findings will be used to investigate the feasibility to conduct a larger trial like this in the future.