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          Greetings,

We have created this webpage to disseminate the manuals for Simplified Intervention to Modify Physical activity, Lifestyle, and Eating behavior or in short the SIMPLE weight loss program. SIMPLE program is a 16 week group intervention for weight loss to be used for schizophrenia patients and other people with severe mental illness with partly medication induced weight gain and obesity. SIMPLE does not assume any prior knowledge of nutrition and wellness and aims for rule simplicity. We have shown SIMPLE to be independent of prior education level, socioeconomic status and baseline cognition. Thus it might be useful –however not studied through a randomized clinical trial- for other populations such as low income, low education, or limited language proficiency groups.

SIMPLE program is developed by Psychosis Program at Yale under my direction, in collaboration with Yale New Haven Hospital Nutrition Clinic. Its development and testing was fully supported by U.S. National Institutes of Mental Health, and received partial support from Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, CMHC foundation, Connecticut Mental Health Center, and Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services of State of Connecticut.  As such it is copyrighted but in public domain, free to download, free to use. Training to clinical professional groups is available on request. We do request proper acknowledgement in all written materials.

In a large clinical trial we have conducted that recruited over 150 overweight patients with schizophrenia who had gained weight partly due to antipsychotic medications, about one third of the patients who were randomized and attended SIMPLE sessions lost over 5% of their total body weight, about 20 lbs as compared to minimal weight change for subjects who did not receive any intervention.  Furthermore they kept this weight off over 6 months (manuscript in preparation).

     I believe the manuals will be self evident to mental health and weight loss professionals alike, and easy to use after some familiarization. I am not able to respond to questions from patients or people who simply want to lose weight. There are many self help sites on the internet and I would kindly ask them to use those. I will do my best to respond questions about implementation of the SIMPLE weight loss program from professionals.

    Best Regards and Good Luck,

  Cenk Tek, M.D.

     Associate Professor of Psychiatry

        Yale University Department of Psychiatry

        Director, Psychosis Program

        Connecticut Mental Health Center