Edinburgh Napier University

  Many people become overweight due to the effects of poor diet, and less active lifestyles. Being obese can affect people s heath and lead to type 2 diabetes and heart problems, People with severe mental health problems find it more difficult to live healthy lifestyles. They have a shorter life span by about 10-20 years and obesity rates up to four times higher than the general population. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is more difficult for people in medium secure mental health units. This type of service provides care and treatment to adults with severe mental health problems, who present a serious risk of harm to others and to themselves, and who are prevented leaving hospital. Service users in such units have often experienced chaotic lifestyles; problematic relationships, employment and substance use issues. Limited physical activity and weight gain is recognised as a major health problem for people in secure units A recent audit of 83 service users in such a unit found only 18 had lost or maintained their admission weight whilst the remaining 65 had increased their weight since admission. This study will work with service users and professionals in two NHS medium secure units to design and evaluate a way of improving the levels of physical activity for service users. What we will do: Design a questionnaire for service users to understand what helps or hinders their participation in physical activities. Explore with staff and service users in a discussion group what strategies may improve engagement, maintain commitment, avoid drop-out and overcome barriers to being physically active. Hold a service user and staff discussion group to develop a physical activity intervention based on evidence from parts 1 and 2. Evaluate the intervention for 3 months by collecting information about service-users participation, body weight, physical activity, mood, mental well-being and motivation. We will also interview all service users and some staff. How we plan to involve people: The study involves genuine involvement and partnership working with service users. We have a service user on the team, and Creative Minds, a charity that develops creative activities to improve wellbeing in service users in such units. We will continue to work together with service user groups at both study sites so we co-produce a physical activity intervention that is relevant to the needs of people in such services. We will establish whether this is practical, acceptable and useful for the people it is aimed at (feasibility study). This type of study examines the practical issues in establishing such a study and therefore can iron out any of these problems before further funding is granted to do a much larger study.