Reducing cardiovascular risk in people living with long-term psychiatric disorders / Réduire le risque cardiovasculaire chez les personnes vivant avec des troubles psychiques

INTRODUCTION: This qualitative study based on focus group study aims to identify experiences, expectations, and representations of people with long-term mental illness and their caregivers regarding cardiovascular disease and its risk factors. The aim of this work is to build a cardiovascular risk reduction program for people affected by long-term mental illness. RESULTS: Four major themes were identified in the corpus: (1) knowledge concerning physical health, (2) barriers to the implementation of better practices, (3) levers towards a healthier life and (4) expectations and needs for a better lifestyle. CONCLUSIONS: This work has provided us with concrete elements for the creation of a cardiovascular risk reduction program for people living with long-term mental illness. The challenges of this program will be to adapt to the needs and expectations of people living with long-term mental illness while facilitating the role of caregivers.

Introduction: Cette étude qualitative, basée sur des Focus Groups, vise à identifier les expériences, attentes et représentations des personnes ayant des troubles psychiques au long cours (TPLC) ainsi que des aidants concernant les maladies cardiovasculaires et leurs facteurs de risque. Le but de ce travail est de construire un programme de réduction du risque cardiovasculaire (CV), destiné aux personnes concernées par ces troubles. Résultats: Quatre thèmes majeurs ont été identifiés dans le corpus : (1) les connaissances et acquis concernant la santé physique, (2) les freins à la mise en place de meilleures pratiques, (3) les leviers vers une vie plus saine et (4) les attentes et besoins pour une meilleure hygiène de vie. Conclusions: Ce travail nous a fourni des éléments concrets pour la création d'un programme de réduction du risque CV pour les personnes vivant avec un TPLC. Les enjeux de ce programme seront de s'adapter aux besoins et aux attentes des personnes vivant avec un TPLC tout en facilitant le rôle des aidants.

Results of a Qualitative Study Aimed at Building a Programme to Reduce Cardiovascular Risk in People with Severe Mental Illness.

People with severe mental illness (PSMI) have a shorter life expectancy and are more likely to have cardiovascular disease than the general population. Patients, carers, psychiatric professionals and primary care providers can all play a role in increasing PSMI physical health. The present qualitative exploratory study aimed to explore the views of these four populations as part of the multi-phase COPsyCAT project, whose objective is to build and test a cardiovascular risk prevention programme for PSMI. Overall, 107 people participated in the study's 16 focus groups, which were transcribed and analysed in a thematic analysis. With a view to building the health promotion programme, major themes identified in the corpus were translated into a list of needs as follows: communication, information, training and support. Results show that it is essential to improve communication between all the different stakeholders in mental health. The greatest challenge facing this programme will be to adapt it to the needs and expectations of PSMI while facilitating work between the various mental health stakeholders. Simple and inexpensive actions could be taken to improve the cardiovascular health of PSMI and will be experimented with during the programme's feasibility study which will start in September 2022.