Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Mental Health
Date Submitted: Nov 7, 2024
Open Peer Review Period: Oct 31, 2024 - Dec 26, 2024
Date Accepted: Jan 28, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Comparison of Feasibility, Safety, and Efficacy of Telehealth-Based vs. In-Person Aerobic Exercise in Individuals with Schizophrenia
ABSTRACT
Background:
Aerobic exercise (AE) training has been shown to enhance aerobic fitness in people with schizophrenia. Traditionally, such training has been administered in-person. However, following the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, many clinics transitioned their services to telehealth-based delivery. Yet, at present there is scarce information about the feasibility, safety, and efficacy of telehealth-based AE in this population.
Objective:
Examine the feasibility, safety, and efficacy of telehealth-based AE in individuals with schizophrenia.
Methods:
We analyzed data from the AE arm of a single-blind, randomized clinical trial examining the impact of a 12-week AE intervention in people with schizophrenia. Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the AE trial intervention transitioned from in-person to telehealth-based delivery of AE, with the training frequency and duration remaining identical. We compared the feasibility, safety, and efficacy of AE training among participants in the in-person (pre-COVID-19) vs. the telehealth AE (post-COVID-19).
Results:
The telehealth-based AE was associated with significantly lower drop-out rate. There were no significant group differences in total time spent exercising, however the telehealth group had significantly lower proportion of session-time exercising at or above target intensity. There were no AE-related serious adverse events associated with either format. There were no significant differences in the proportion of patients with any AE-related minor/moderate adverse events (e.g. muscle soreness, joint pain, blisters, dyspnea). There were no significant differences between the in-person vs. telehealth groups regarding changes in aerobic fitness indexed by VO2max.
Conclusions:
Our findings provide preliminary support for the deployment of telehealth-based AE for individuals with schizophrenia. We discuss the findings’ clinical implications, along with potential implementation challenges. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT03270098
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.