ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1671944
This article is part of the Research TopicRedefining Acute Psychiatric Care: Strategies for Improved Inpatient ExperiencesView all 10 articles
Oxytocin Administration to Clinicians in Acute Psychiatric Care Settings: A Feasibility Study
Provisionally accepted
Ayelet Nir1,2
Omer Sedoff1,3
Gal Yenon3Efrat Hirsch Klein3,4Yaen Schriebman3,4Halil Kashua3
Hagaim Maoz3,5Yuval Bloch3,5
Dana Tzur Bitan1,3*- 1University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
- 2Clalit Health Services, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
- 3Shalvata Mental Health Center, Hod Hasharon, Israel
- 4Tel Aviv University Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
- 5Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
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Oxytocin (OT) has been previously found to facilitate therapeutic outcomes when administered to patients. Recent evidence suggests that therapist's OT levels similarly influence clinicians' ability to respond to patients in an empathic and responsive manner. However, no study previously assessed the impact of OT administration to clinicians treating patients in acute settings. This preliminary feasibility study investigated the applicability and trends of effects of OT administration to clinicians performing triage assessment in a public psychiatric emergency room, while focusing on perceived empathy and quality of the therapeutic encounter. Three clinicians were double-blindingly administered with intranasal OT at one day, and saline placebo (PLC) at a different day. The patients they met (N = 16) provided self-reports on the clinician's empathy (BLRI), the quality of the session (SEQ), and their level of psychological distress (HSCL-11). The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to compare ratings across the two conditions. Results indicated that patients reported significantly deeper and more valuable meeting with the clinicians following OT administration to clinicians (S = 32.0, p = 0.0398) as well as significantly lower levels of distress (S = 70.5, p = 0.0343). Clinicians perceived empathy was higher after OT administration compared to PLC, however, this difference did not reach statistical significance (S = 38, p = 0.1675). Although these results should be interpreted with caution due to the preliminary nature of the study, they highlight the potential contribution of clinician's OT in facilitation the therapeutic process in acute settings, and call for further investigation in larger, controlled trials.
Keywords: Oxytocin, Empathy, Acute care, Emergency Psychiatry, Session evaluation
Received: 23 Jul 2025; Accepted: 17 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Nir, Sedoff, Yenon, Hirsch Klein, Schriebman, Kashua, Maoz, Bloch and Tzur Bitan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dana Tzur Bitan, dana.tzur@gmail.com
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