Ninth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

In recent years, mental health problems became more important, and sharing your personal story was one of the promising therapeutic interventions. Life Story Group was a closed group that group members would share their own life stories to each other. This study was to explore the effectiveness of Life Story Group in Mental Illness.The study period was from January 2018 to March 2018 and conducted on twelve clients of psychiatric day care center at southern mental health hospital in Taiwan. Total of twelve weeks of group was held once a week for seventy minutes and it was led by occupational therapist. The first two weeks were self-introduction and interpersonal activities to enhance the cohesiveness of the group. The theme of the third week to the sixth week were to conduct group discussions and tell the story of the disease through the history of the development of the mental illness. The tenth and eleventh weeks were understanding the self-worth and sharing the expectations and goals of the future. The last week was a 12-week review. We used Rosenberg self-esteem scale and WHOQOL-BREF as pre-measurement and post-measurement tools.The results revealed that the average score of Rosenberg self-esteem scale decreased by 2.286, indicating that the participants’ self-esteem increased and reached a significant difference (p=0.008). The average score of PsyQoL increased by 1.23, indicating that PsyQoL increased and reached significant (p=0.010). This suggested that the way of storytelling could improve self esteem and Psy QoL. Life Story Group was one of the promising interventions.