Within a period of 26 weeks, in both the MI and the
HE group, patients were offered 8 sessions of either MI
or HE. When the therapist judged there were problems to
keep patients engaged in the interventions or in case of
practical barriers, fewer sessions were given, with a minimum of 5 sessions. Less than 5 sessions was counted as
a dropout. The session duration varied between 20 and
45 minutes, depending on the attention span of the participant during a session. Therapists were not otherwise
involved in the treatment of participants. Patients were
told they would be allocated to 1 of 2 active interventions
and were not told which was the experimental condition. Next to the interventions, participants received care
as usual, consisting of functional assertive community
treatment for patients treated on an outpatient basis and
routine clinical care for hospitalized patients.
Before starting the intervention, a baseli