Psychological Disorder

Studies in hospitalized patients have shown that a large percentage of them consider religion or spirituality to be an important factor in enabling them to cope with a serious illness. Studies conducted in the ICU, have shown that spiritual care from a chaplain/priest is associated with increased satisfaction in family members of critically ill patients, however, the focus has traditionally been on offering support to family members and not to patients. Interventions for critically ill patients have mostly been implemented by chaplains or a member of the health care team, primarily nurses. Although these studies show promising results in terms of quality of life, they mostly reflect the perspective of the health teams and not that of the patients, they are not evaluated with standardized instruments and, in general, they are not standardized strategies. Given that this will be one of the first studies with patients who received care in the ICU, it is proposed to conduct a pilot and feasibility study to gather lessons to implement a larger study. Studies of this type place greater emphasis on evaluating the feasibility of implementing the intervention and therefore this study will seek to: (1) evaluate the feasibility of implementing the intervention in a hospital setting, including participant recruitment procedures; (2) evaluate how the intervention, format and manner of implementation is received by participants; (3) preliminarily evaluate the impact on psychological symptomatology associated with PICS at the end of the intervention, at 3 and 6 months post-intervention. Showing the impact of spiritual care on health outcomes of individuals, through studies such as this one, may contribute to a paradigm shift from a biomedical perspective to a holistic view of ICU patients. Although the technological and advanced life support offered by the ICU is essential for critical patients, but survival of a severe disease without a good quality of life makes it necessary to seek strategies to improve this problem, which undoubtedly requires a comprehensive approach to the person, through medical-physiological care and spiritual care.

Healthy Life Centers (Norwegian, 'Frisklivssentralen') is a municipal service in Norway that aims to promote both physical and mental health, as well as to limit the development of non-communicable diseases. Previous research has shown that receiving follow-up from Healthy Life Centers has led to higher levels of daily physical activity, in addition to improved self-reported health and quality of life among the participants. However, there is a lack of studies that have examined what kind of physiological health effects can be expected from participating in the Healthy Life Center's follow-up. In this study, responses to the 12-week physical activity program of the Healthy Life Center will be compared with the responses in a negative control group that does not receive such follow-up. Both the intervention group and the reference group (the negative control group) will carry out the same tests and measurements before and after the 12 week period. The tests will include measurements of anthropometric variables (body height, body weight and waist circumference), body composition, arterial stiffness, resting blood pressure and blood variables (blood glucose, long-term blood glucose, blood lipid profile and inflammation markers), in addition to physical tests of mobility, balance, maximum aerobic capacity (maximal oxygen consumption) and maximum muscle strength. Questionnaires related to adherence to the Healthy Life Center follow-up, socio-demographic variables, eating and drinking habits, activity level, perceived physical fitness, motivation for exercise, and health-related quality of life will also be included.