Post-print: Mindfulness-Based Crisis Interventions (MBCI) for psychosis within acute inpatient psychiatric settings; A feasibility randomised controlled trial

Having to go into hospital because of a mental health problem can be a very distressing and disruptive experience. Providing care to people in hospital is also very expensive for the NHS. One of the main reasons people have to go into hospital is due to problems such as hearing voices, or experiencing distressing beliefs, such as feeling in danger from other people. These are also known as psychotic symptoms. One reason there is high demand for psychiatric beds is because sometimes people get re-admitted to hospital quite soon after leaving hospital. Having a talking therapy in hospital might help people to stay well for longer after they are discharged. We did a trial called the amBITION study (BrIef Talking TherapIes ON wards) to help find out if we could do a study on short talking therapies on wards for people with psychotic symptoms. We found that we could recruit enough people to take part in the study, people were highly satisfied with the therapy they received, and we were able to keep in touch with most people to follow them up after they left hospital. We found that fewer people who had received the talking therapy came back into hospital in the following year, compared to a comparison group who received usual care. This encouraging finding shows it would be helpful to conduct a bigger study in the future to find out for sure whether offering short talking therapies may be effective in reducing re-admission rates.