A intervention fostering autonomous motivation, physical activity and cardiovascular fitness in rheumatoid arthritis

患有类风湿性关节炎（一种影响关节的疾病）的人患心脏病的几率高于平均水平。体育活动可以减少心脏问题，有许多运动计划可供心脏病风险较高的人使用。不幸的是，患有类风湿性关节炎的人往往不包括在这些计划中。这很可能是因为关节炎患者和应该转诊关节炎患者的人都认为运动会使关节炎恶化。有很多证据表明，运动对关节炎患者有益。让这些人锻炼是一个重要的问题，然而，在监督锻炼计划停止后保持他们的身体活跃也是另一个重要因素。在这项研究提案中，我们将设计一种心理干预措施，以帮助类风湿关节炎患者开始锻炼，更重要的是激励他们在3个月的计划结束后继续锻炼。将专门为每个参与者制定练习方案。我们将把这种运动加心理干预与只涉及运动的方案进行比较。然后，我们将测试那些有3个月的监督运动计划结合心理干预的人，与那些遵循相同运动计划但没有心理干预的人相比，在1年内是否有更好的身体和心理健康。我们特别感兴趣的是，研究开始后6个月和1年的身体活动量和心理健康是否有任何差异，以及身体活动水平（希望增加）对心脏病风险的影响。

People with rheumatoid arthritis (a disease that affect the joints) develop heart disease more often than average. Physical activity can reduce heart problems, and there are many exercise programmes available for people with higher risk for heart disease. Unfortunately, people with rheumatoid arthritis are often not included in these programmes. This is most likely because both the people with arthritis and the people who should be referring the people with arthritis think that exercise will make the arthritis worse. There is a lot of evidence that exercise can be beneficial to arthritis patients. Getting these people to exercise is an important issue, however, keeping them physically active after the supervised exercise programme has stopped is also another important factor. In this study proposal we will design a psychological intervention to help people with rheumatoid arthritis to start exercise, and more importantly to motivate them to keep on exercising when the 3-month programme will stop. The exercise programme will be developed specifically for each participant. We will compare this exercise plus psychological intervention with a programme that will involve exercise only. We will then test if those who have the a 3-month supervised exercise programme combined with the psychological intervention, have better physical and psychological health over 1 year, compared to those who follow the same exercise programme but without the psychological intervention. We are specifically interested to see if there are any differences in the amount of physical activity and psychological well-being at 6 months and one year after the start of the study, and what the effects of the (hopefully increased) levels of physical activity are on the risk for heart disease.