Eight weeks of a mindfulness intervention known as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) significantly improved stress and depression among patients with inflammatory bowel disease, and these improvements persisted for at least 12 weeks after therapy ended, according to the results of a randomized, controlled trial.
Source: The American Gastroenterological Association
In the intention-to-treat analysis, stress symptoms, as measured by the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales (DASS-21), improved by 39% at week 8 and by 45% at week 20, reported Brona Wynne, PhD, of University College Dublin together with her associates. These improvements were highly significant compared with baseline and treatment as usual (P = .001 for both comparisons). “Post hoc analyses indicated that baseline stress levels were similar in control and treatment groups,” the researchers wrote in Gastroenterology. “The results of the per protocol analysis were comparable, with a 43% and 49% reduction in stress in the treatment group from baseline to 8 and 20 weeks.”
Multiple studies have documented high levels of stress and psychological dysfunction among patients with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Studies of various mindfulness therapy, relaxation, stress management, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and hypnotherapy interventions often failed to collect key clinical data or were underpowered, uncontrolled, and unrandomized. Acceptance and commitment therapy uses mindfulness to identify adverse thoughts and experiences, accept these as part of life, and recommit to “move towards values that have been identified and adopted by the individual,” the investigators wrote. “This can be defined as the ability to contact the present moment more fully as a conscious human being and to change, or persist in, behavior when doing so serves valued ends.”
Their single-center study, which they said was the first to evaluate ACT in IBD patients, included 79 individuals with stable or mildly active Crohn’s disease (38 patients) or ulcerative colitis (41 patients) who were randomly assigned to ACT (37 patients) or control treatment as usual (42 patients). The two comparison groups were demographically and clinically similar. The ACT program involved eight 90-minute, weekly sessions of groups of 14-16 individuals, led by a single psychologist who tailored the course material toward IBD with a focus on lowering stress. An independent psychologist observed each session to assess adherence to protocol.
Not only did ACT meet the primary study endpoint, it also produced a 25% decrease in perceived stress (on a 1-10 scale) by week 8 and a 27% decrease in perceived stress by week 20 (P less than .001 versus treatment as usual). Depression scores in the ACT group also fell by 47% by week 8 and by 45% at week 20 (P = .01 versus treatment as usual). Anxiety levels decreased by 29% at week 8 and by 31% at week 20, but these improvements did not significantly differ from those in the control group (P = .39).
Interestingly, ACT did not significantly improve symptom burden, activities of daily living, disease-related worry, general well-being, C-reactive protein (CRP) levels, fecal calprotectin levels, or scores on the version used of the Clinical Assessment of Depression (CAD) or the short Mayo assessment. Hair cortisol levels showed an association with baseline stress and anxiety, but not with treatment response.
Care programs for IBD increasingly emphasize mental health services despite a lack of robust trials to support these interventions, the investigators noted. Thus, their findings highlight “the need for researchers and clinicians to further develop and optimize the content and delivery of psychological programs for IBD patients.”
Tillotts Pharma and Boston Scientific provided partial funding, but had no other role in the study. The researchers reported having no relevant conflicts of interest.
SOURCE: Wynne B et al. Gastroenterology. 2018 Nov 16. doi: 10.1053/j.gastro.2018.11.030.