Recommendations for psychiatric patients
The Danish National Board of Health recommends integration of physical activity as a systematic service in the treatment of psychiatric patients, including integration into treatment plans.
Psychiatric inpatients should be offered physical activity of moderate intensity lasting at least 30 minutes daily for adults and 60 minutes for children, corresponding to Denmark's national recommendations on physical activity.
Read more about the recommendations in the right column of this page named related links.
Physical activity in the psychiatric healthcare system
The Board has implemented the project 'Physical activity in the healthcare system - model efforts at psychiatric departments' as part of its project on major noncommunicable diseases.
The purpose of the project has been to promote the use of physical activity with a view to disease prevention and treatment for psychiatric patients. In 2005/06, a development project was launched at four model departments. Based on the experience from the model project, in spring 2007 the Board offered resources for co-financing new hospital departments wanting to implement physical activity, including the training of a physical activity consultant.
Twenty-one psychiatric departments throughout Denmark were granted funding and have been working to integrate physical activity more systematically into their daily routines. They have been helped on the way by the physical activity consultants who were trained in connection with the model project. Read more about physical activity consultants at www.sinusliv.dk (Danish only).
The Board has assessed the implementation and gathered the experience in an evaluation report. Read the report and other material which has been developed in conjunction with the project on the right of this page (Danish only).