Predictors of improvement in personal recovery and activity engagement among mental health service users following a group-based sensory modulation intervention.

BACKGROUND: Mental health service users often have sensory processing difficulties affecting activity engagement and personal recovery. Since interventions targeting this area are scarce, a group-based sensory modulation intervention was developed. To determine in which settings and for whom this intervention has clinical value, this study aimed to investigate whether sociodemographic and clinical baseline characteristics were associated with improvement in personal recovery and activity engagement.

METHODS: This study included participants from the intervention group (N = 107) of a trial (reg.nr: NCT06432114) evaluating an 11-week group-based sensory modulation intervention in mental health outpatient units. Data were collected at baseline, post-intervention, and at 6-month follow-up. Analysis included descriptive statistics and baseline-adjusted multiple linear regression models.

RESULTS: Results showed that the absence of a psychosis diagnosis was associated with a higher mean score of personal recovery at post-intervention (p = 0.003), but not at 6-months follow-up (p = 0.826). There were no significant associations between the predictors and activity engagement.

CONCLUSION: Most predictors in the models were not significantly associated with improvement across any of the outcomes. This suggests that improvement in personal recovery and activity engagement, following the intervention, was accessible to the diverse group of mental health service users, independent of their baseline characteristics.