Edinburgh Napier University

  Background
We aimed to test a mindfulness-based psycho-education group (MBPEG), versus conventional psycho-education group (CPEG) versus treatment-as-usual (TAU), in patients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders over a 24-month follow-up.
Methods
This single-blind, multi-site, pragmatic randomized controlled trial was conducted in six community treatment facilities across three countries (Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan). Patients were randomly allocated to one of the treatment conditions, and underwent six months of treatment. The primary outcomes were changes in duration of rehospitalizations and mental state (PANSS) between baseline and one week, six, 12 and 18 months’ post treatment.
Results
A total of 300 patients in each country were assessed for eligibility between October 2013 and 30 April 2014,38 patients per country (n=342) were assigned to each treatment group and included in the intention-to-treat-analysis. There was a significant difference in the length of re-hospitalizations between the three groups over 24 months F (2,330) =5.23, p=0.005, with MBPEG participants having a shorter mean duration of re-hospitalizations than those in the
other groups. The MBPEG and CPEG participants had significant differential changes in proportional ORs of complete remission (all individual PANSS items