Evidence Based Practice

Search Strategy

Evidence-Based Practice

Jegede Oluwaseun Comfort

Chamberlain University

May 16, 2020

Evidence-Based Practice

Clinical Question

The topic to be tackled by my group is the effects of exercise on clients with mental health disorders. The topic narrows down to the effects that patients with mental disorders encounter due to strict adherence to exercise. The effects could be psychological and psychological in regards to BMI, well-being, quality of life, weight, and level of symptoms, among others. Mental health has been a contentious issue in the U.S. and the world at large, and numerous researchers have taken upon themselves to explore the topic while determining the various perspectives of the issue. Multiple articles have explored the topic of mental health while looking at its various dimensions in society, such as the prevalence among adolescents and adults, racial and gender disparities in the cases of mental health, substance abuse, and even effects of exercise. My group’s objective is to determine how exercise impacts mental health patients while exploring ways in which mental health patients would use exercise to improve their lives.

The PICO format will aid in the development of the clinical questions and answers to help in the exploration of the research question. The population under consideration is mental health patients. The intervention is the effect of various types of exercises that mental health patients should consider depending on their severity. For the group question, we do not have any comparison. The outcome is the psychological and physiological benefits of the right weight, improved QoL, BMI, well-being, and the level of symptoms. The purpose of this research is to identify the search strategies employed in the identification of the primary research used in the study of the topic.

Level of evidence

Depression is one of the leading causes of mental health problems. Whiteford et al. (2013), as cited by Jin et al. (2019), highlighted depression as a prominent problem in the world and projected to be the second leading cause of depression in the world in 2020. The author highlighted the late-life depression (LLD) as being one of the prevalent mental disorders among older adults. While there has been a heavy reliance on the anti-depressants on the treatment of depression cases, the accompanying side effects have been the leading cause of mortality among patients grappling with the condition. However, the author observed that despite trials not demonstrating exercise as improving depressive symptoms among older adults, there had been positive effects. Some trials have demonstrated positive changes with others posting no change at all. A cluster-randomized controlled trial discussed by Underwood et al. (2013), as cited by Jin et al. (2019), highlighted a moderately intense exercise program for not reducing depressive symptoms among patients 65 or older residing in care homes. Jin et al. (2019) highlighted exercise as being beneficial when used as an additional treatment for older adults depicting a positive response towards the anti-depressant medications. The formulated PICO question for this article will be: Do mental health patients considering exercise as part of their lifestyle compared to their counterparts that do not exercise experience psychological and physiological benefits such as BMI, improved QoL, weight and level of symptoms during the period they are dealing with mental health issues?

Search Strategy

When researching the effects of exercise on mental health concerning the PICOT research question, there was a reliance on key terms such as ‘exercise and mental health.’ I opted for the Chamberlain Library Database, using the CINAHL Complete. The database provided research articles relevant to my search and proved important in answering the research question. The total articles, as provided in the database, were 2,921 in number. The articles stretched to all various dimensions on the topic of mental health. I did not have to refine my search to get what I required. Before I even picked the first article to use in my paper, I had to narrow down the articles to the articles whose year of publication was within five years hence limiting to articles dating between 2015 and 2020.

The CINAHL database was very convenient to use as it provided means of filtering to what one requires. The database also displays all the details of the author and the article, making it is easy to prove the originality and determining whether the material is scholarly. The study type for the research article was a quantitative method. This method entailed the collection of numerical data from the two groups used in the investigation. The first group was of older Korean women that had to exercise with the control group not participating in any exercise activities.

Summary

The search processes were not as complicated as one would think. The topic was straightforward, making it easy to point out some of the key terms to use in searching. The one article that this paper narrowed down to focused on the impact of exercise on depressive symptoms, which caused mental health problems. The article highlighted the long-term exercise interventions used alongside resistance exercise such as walking as resulting in a relative reduction of depressive symptoms.

Reference

Jin, Y., Kim, D., Hong, H. & Kang, H. (2019). A Long-Term Exercise Intervention Reduces Depressive Symptoms in Older Korean Women. Journal of Sport Science and Medicine, 18, 399-404