Brief Strategic Therapy and Motivational Interviewing among Cardiac Rehabilitation Patients: pre-post treatment results

Abstract

The MOTIV-HEART study is aimed at testing the incremental efficacy of Brief Strategic Therapy (BST) combined with Motivational Interviewing (MI) in improving selected biomedical and psychological outcomes over and beyond the stand-alone BST in Cardiac Rehabilitation (CR). 42 heart patients referring to a single clinical center for CR and weigh loss treatment were randomly allocated into two conditions: i) 3 sessions of BST; ii) 3 sessions of BST plus MI. Data were collected at baseline and discharge (1 month later). Pre-treatment heterogeneity was found between groups, and no significant between-group difference in post-treatment medians was obtained in any variables. Within-group changes were detected for the patients' extrinsic regulation, which significantly decreased only in the BST group, and for the RAI score and the patients' willingness to change, significantly increasing only in the control group. No evidence of superiority of the combined treatment (BST +MI) over stand-alone BST within CR was found. Conclusions: since combining BST and MI within CR for the first time, the present investigation sets out to be a pilot study, and its results can therefore guide in the implementation of stronger experimental design that would help clarifying the obtained outcomes.