“It's the First Time I Feel as One”. Patients' Experience of Therapeutic Body Wraps in Swiss Public Adult Inpatient Psychiatric Wards

Abstract

Many patients suffering from serious mental illness experience severe anxiety, and those with psychosis often report feeling that their bodies are falling apart. Expert opinions reported relational benefits and tranquilizing effects of therapeutic body wraps (TBWs). Yet this adjunct nursing therapy has rarely been studied and the existing knowledge is limited to single clinical cases reported from clinicians' perspectives. This study reports on seven adult patients, whose independent accounts of TBWs were audio-recorded, transcribed and cross-analyzed. It sheds light on a commonly underestimated need among many severely ill psychiatric patients to have their anxiety addressed on a bodily level.

Physiological effects of Therapeutic Body Wraps in healthy volunteers: An observational study

“…Indeed, during debriefing after TBW, some participants reported experience of short sleep and/or felt calm and safe that they said resulted from being in the TBW. This echoes reports by several patients, who found themselves too agitated and described their time within TBW as a welcomed parenthesis in their daily anxiety-filled existence (Skuza et al, 2017). Similar benefit was reported by parents of ASD children treated with TBW (Chamak, 2020).…”

“…Tests of this observational study with pre-post design were conducted in a quiet room with dim light and ambient temperature between 20 • and 24 • C between 1 and 4 P.M due to the diurnal course of sC and sAA (35,36). The TBW was performed on each participant according to the standard practice of TBW in Switzerland (Opsommer et al, 2016;Skuza et al, 2017). All participants had trial TBW test to familiarize with procedure without data collection, which was performed on another day before the main TBW experiment.…”

“…Furthermore, research shows that when medication is offered alone without other forms of therapy, the rate of initial refusal and that of early termination of treatment by the patient is up to more than three times higher compared to treatment plans that combine non-drug interventions with medication (Swift, Greenberg, Tompkins, & Parkin, 2017). Also, most importantly for clinical nurses, TBW can be perceived by the patient as a means to enhance their action in their illness control, as reported by Skuza et al, 2017(Skuza et al, 2017, which could be creatively used by nurses as part of a medication discontinuation strategy while still providing anxiolytic protection. Finally, the use of TBW as a specific anxiolytic nursing intervention could contribute to reinforce the specific/own professional role of nurses by placing the patient and their resources and the therapeutic interaction with the nurse at the center, not the substance.…”

“…The latter consists of simultaneous and symmetrical manual pressure through the wrap and of naming aloud the patient's consecutive body parts. To mark bodily limits, this procedure of sensory stimulation is concluded by one practitioner softly pressing the patient's head, whereas the other practitioner is gently pushing the feet (Opsommer et al, 2016;Skuza, Bangerter, & Dubois, 2017).…”

“…Previous studies in adults showed significant reduction in the daily intake of anxiolytics by patients that may be interpreted in terms of TBW potential to reduce anxiety in patients (Opsommer et al, 2016;Skuza et al, 2017). It is established that heightened anxiety levels lead to elevated levels of salivary concentration of such biomarkers as cortisol (sC) and alpha-amylase (sAA) (Petrowski, Herold, Joraschky, Wittchen, & Kirschbaum, 2010).…”