CClinicalTrials.gg
Status unknownNCT03862209RECOVER-EUpdated Mar 5, 2019

Community-based Mental Health Care for People With Severe and Enduring Mental Ill Health (RECOVER-E) Croatia

An interventional study of Community mental health team in Severe Mental Disorder, Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder, sponsored by Klinički Bolnički Centar Zagreb. Status unknown at 1 site in Croatia. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 65 Years. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2019-03-05.

Sponsored by Klinički Bolnički Centar Zagreb · Not applicable, Interventional, and Health services research

The sponsor has not verified this record recently (last verified Mar 2019), so the status shown — last known as Recruiting — may be out of date.

From the registry’s dates

  • Registered 1 year 2 months after the study started (first participant enrolled Jan 2018, registered Mar 2019).
Phase
Not applicable
Study type
Interventional
Enrollment
200
Allocation
Randomized
Ages
18 Years to 65 Years
Sex
All
01

Study summary

To contribute to improving the level of functioning and quality of life and mental health outcomes for people with severe and enduring mental ill health (SMI) (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression) by adapting and up scaling the implementation of a community-based service delivery model in Croatia.

Read the detailed description

For nearly 900 million people living in Europe, mental disorders constitute the most significant yet most neglected public health problem: depression affects an estimated 30.3 million Europeans, and psychotic disorders 5 million Europeans. People with severe and enduring mental ill health want the same things out of life as other citizens but are often placed in a vulnerable position and are hence afforded less opportunities to attain their goals and thus experience a lower quality of life, and have a lower life expectancy compared to the general population. For many countries that have undergone mental health services reform or have health systems in transition, efforts to make such comprehensive community-based mental health services available resulted in short-lived outcomes or are still to demonstrate substantial impact. RECOVER-E's aims to ensure well-functioning community mental health teams in 5 countries in Europe (Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Montenegro), which will serve as the central node for coordination and provision of care for people with SMI. Our project narrows the implementation gap by going beyond infrastructure changes and pursuing the development of human resource capacity and care pathways that can be distilled in a comprehensive pathway to scale for regional and national decision-makers for uptake after the project's life span. RECOVER-E will: 1) Develop evidence based care pathways and treatment protocols for transition to scale for regional and national decision makers in 5 implementation sites; 2) Establish a peer to peer capacity building partnership in community mental health by linking a European expert panel with key stakeholders in 5 implementation sites to co-create community mental health services for people with SMI) 3) Evaluate intervention elements that will enhance sustainable adoption and implementation of community-based mental health care for people with SMI, by carrying out implementation research.

02

Conditions studied

  • Severe Mental Disorder
  • Schizophrenia
  • Bipolar Disorder
  • Severe Depression

Keywords

  • Community implementation
  • Community engagement
  • patient centerednessP
  • Implementation science
  • Co-creation
  • Iterative learning processes
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In context

Schizophrenia

3,471 studies on the registry are indexed under Schizophrenia; 472 are open to participants now.

This study's planned enrollment of 200 is above the median of 70 across 2,872 interventional studies indexed under Schizophrenia.

Browse Schizophrenia studies →

Lead sponsor

Klinički Bolnički Centar Zagreb is the lead sponsor of 8 studies on the registry; 2 are open to participants now.

Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.

04

Who can participate

Ages eligible
18 Years to 65 Years
Sexes eligible
All
Accepts healthy volunteers
No

Inclusion criteria

Adults (ages 18-65), current service users, with severe and enduring mental ill-health, which, for clinical purposes, typically relates to diagnostic categories of bipolar disorder, severe depression, or schizophrenia. We use the following definition for SMI:

  • Presence of a psychiatric disorder that requires care and treatment (so, they are NOT in symptom remission)
  • Has severe limitations in social and community functioning (i.e. they are not in functional remission)
  • These problems are not transient (e.g. temporary, one-off) in nature (They are systematic and long-term)
  • Coordinated care provided by care networks or teams is needed to implement the treatment plan

Exclusion criteria

Exclusion Criteria:

Exclusion criteria at the patient level includes patients who do not consent to their data being collected who are part of the intervention or control conditions, those who are under the age of 18 at the start of the study.

05

Study design

Phase
Not applicable
Primary purpose
Health services research
Allocation
Randomized
Intervention model
Parallel assignment
Masking
None (open label)
Enrollment
200 participants (estimated)

Study arms

  • Experimental
    Community mental health team (CMHT)

    CMHTs will be multidisciplinary; that is, staff will be appointed to the CMHTs that include nurses, social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, and in this project, a peer expert (a person with lived experience of mental health services). All staff within the CMHT will have defined roles and responsibilities that align with the staff functions, roles and linkages detailed in evidence-based service delivery models for community mental health teams. Participant will randomly be assigned to CMHT that will provide outreach mental health care during the project.

    Other: Community mental health team

  • No intervention
    Standard care

    Health care settings and their providers randomised to the control condition receive usual care: participant will gain standard care; ambulatory care, day hospitals or hospital admission.

Interventions

  • OtherCommunity mental health team

    CMHT will provide home-based treatment inclusive of crisis resolution services and procedures for early recognition of subclinical psychosis and bipolar disorder, and intensive case management. Integrated care (i.e. health and social care interventions) will be provided to all clients. Furthermore, health and social care evidence-based interventions for severe mental illness (SMI) will be employed during home treatment, such as family-based interventions, motivational interviewing, and cognitive behavioural therapies, combined with medication management and identifying employment (paid and non paid options) and support in finding and maintaining this employment, recovery groups and housing opportunities.

    Also known as: CMHT

06

What researchers measure

Primary outcomes

  1. Changes in daily functioning

    World Health Organisation Disability Assessment Schedule 2 (WHODAS2) measures health and disability-level of functioning in 6 domains:Cognition, Mobility, Self-care,Getting along, Life activities, Participation in community activities.The instrument is self-reporting; can be administered by a health worker if needed. Answers are distributed into 5 categories:"none","mild","moderate","severe"and"extreme or cannot do". It ends with 3 items where answers are presented as number of days (when difficulties were present). Score on any dimension ranges 0 to 7, results are depicted in a diagram which reflects relation between dimensions(the higher the score, the lower level of difficulties/better functioning) and changes over time

    Time frame: baseline, 12 months, 18 months

Secondary outcomes

  1. Change in health-related quality of life

    Euro Quality of Life Index (Euro QoL 5-D 3-L). The instrument measures five dimensions: Mobility, Self-care, Daily activities, Pain/Discomfort and Anxiety/ Depression. Each dimension can be rated at three levels: from no problems to major problems. The five dimensions can be summed into a descriptive health state with 11111 representing no problems in any of the five health dimensions and 33333 indicating major problems in any of the five health dimensions. Second part of the instrument is the Visual Analogue Scale to assess health status at baseline, where 0 signifies worst imaginable health state, and 100 signifies best imaginable health state.

    Time frame: baseline, 12 months, 18 months

07

Study locations

1 of 1 sites recruiting
  • KBC Zagreb
    Zagreb, 10000, Croatia
    • Martina Rojnić Kuzman, A/Prof. · Contact · mrojnic@gmail.com · +385 1 2388 888
    • Martina Rojnić Kuzman, A/Prof. · Principal investigator
    Recruiting
08

References and documents

Publications

  • Roth C, Wensing M, Kuzman MR, Bjedov S, Medved S, Istvanovic A, Grbic DS, Simetin IP, Tomcuk A, Dedovic J, Djurisic T, Nica RI, Rotaru T, Novotni A, Bajraktarov S, Milutinovic M, Nakov V, Zarkov Z, Dinolova R, Walters BH, Shields-Zeeman L, Petrea I. Experiences of healthcare staff providing community-based mental healthcare as a multidisciplinary community mental health team in Central and Eastern Europe findings from the RECOVER-E project: an observational intervention study. BMC Psychiatry. 2021 Oct 24;21(1):525. doi: 10.1186/s12888-021-03542-2. PubMed 34689733 ↗
  • Wijnen BFM, Smit F, Uhernik AI, Istvanovic A, Dedovic J, Dinolova R, Nica R, Velickovski R, Wensing M, Petrea I, Shields-Zeeman L. Sustainability of Community-Based Specialized Mental Health Services in Five European Countries: Protocol for Five Randomized Controlled Trial-Based Health-Economic Evaluations Embedded in the RECOVER-E Program. JMIR Res Protoc. 2020 Jun 1;9(6):e17454. doi: 10.2196/17454. PubMed 32476658 ↗
  • Shields-Zeeman L, Petrea I, Smit F, Walters BH, Dedovic J, Kuzman MR, Nakov V, Nica R, Novotni A, Roth C, Tomcuk A, Wijnen BFM, Wensing M. Towards community-based and recovery-oriented care for severe mental disorders in Southern and Eastern Europe: aims and design of a multi-country implementation and evaluation study (RECOVER-E). Int J Ment Health Syst. 2020 Apr 22;14:30. doi: 10.1186/s13033-020-00361-y. eCollection 2020. PubMed 32336984 ↗

Individual participant data

Plan to share: Yes — De-identified individual participant data will be shared with the coordinating institute and Heidelberg University Hospital (two institutions that will be in charge of analyzing data from all participating project sites).

Supporting information: Study protocol, Icf, Csr

09

Updates

Tracking since Sep 25, 2026
No changes since tracking began. The registry record was last updated on Mar 5, 2019, before this site started recording changes on Sep 25, 2026. Its history is on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
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Registry details

Key details

Study ID
NCT03862209
Lead sponsor
Klinički Bolnički Centar Zagreb
Collaborators
Stichting Trimbos-Instituut
Responsible party
Sponsor
First posted
Mar 5, 2019
Start date
Jan 1, 2018
Primary completion
Jan 1, 2021 (estimated)
Completion
Jul 1, 2021 (estimated)
Last update
Mar 5, 2019

Study contacts

Martina Rojnić Kuzman, A/Prof.
Contact
mrojnic@gmail.com
+385 1 2388 888
Sara Medved, MD
Contact
smedved@kbc-zagreb.hr
+385 1 2388 394
Martina Rojnić Kuzman, A/Prof.
study chair · Department of Psychiatry

Oversight

Data monitoring committee
Yes
FDA-regulated drug
No
FDA-regulated device
No
View the source record on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗

Not currently enrolling

This study is status unknown, as verified in Mar 2019. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.

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