Insights of Patients and Clinicians on the Promise of the Experience Sampling Method for Psychiatric Care

Abstract

Objective: The current qualitative study aimed to map the relevance of the experience sampling method (ESM) for psychiatric practice and identify barriers and facilitators for implementation, as perceived by patients and clinicians. Methods: Participants were 22 patients with various diagnoses and 21 clinicians (e.g., psychiatrists, psychologists) who participated in interviews or focus groups. Using Atlas.TI, qualitative thematic analysis was conducted to analyze the transcripts, resulting in four themes: 1) applications, 2) advantages, 3) undesirable effects, and 4) requirements for implementation of ESM in care. Results: Clinicians and patients believed ESM could be relevant in every phase of care to increase patients' awareness, insight and self-management, personalize interventions, and alert patients to rising symptoms. Further, ESM was expected to improve the patient-clinician relationship, lead to objective, personalized, reliable and visual data, and increase efficiency of care. However, participants warned against high assessment burden and potential symptom worsening. Conclusions: This study provides first evidence that the potential of ESM is recognized by both patients and clinicians. Key recommendations for optimal implementation of ESM in psychiatric care include flexible application of ESM, collaboration between patient and clinician, regular evaluation, awareness of negative reactivity, availability to patients with different psychiatric syndromes, and implementation by an interdisciplinary team of patients, clinicians, researchers, and information technology specialists.

Experienced Burden of and Adherence to Smartphone-Based Ecological Momentary Assessment in Persons with Affective Disorders

“…In most clinical settings, some form of real-time data is already gathered via paper-and-pencil methods (e.g., thought diaries, assessment of mood fluctuation in bipolar patients, or assessments of the frequency and intensity of panic attacks). The number of studies investigating the clinical usefulness of EMA methods via a smartphone in routine practice is also rising [32][33][34]. User experiences should also be explored in clinical settings when considering whether EMA can indeed be translated into a tool, beneficial for patients with affective disorders.…”

Using person-specific networks in psychotherapy: challenges, limitations, and how we could use them anyway

“…Such collaboration is a key principle of CC [ 29 ], as it makes use of the introspective capability of the patient and the clinical expertise of the therapist. A recent study showed that patients and therapists both recommended the collaborative personalization of the ESM questionnaire for the implementation of ESM in clinical practice [ 30 ]. Personalized ESM has not been empirically studied yet but is currently being investigated in the Therap-i trial.…”

“…Besides the direct benefit of questions generated by PSNs, PSNs may also have secondary benefits for psychotherapy that result from the way PSNs are created and presented. 6 First, ESM assessment itself is increasingly considered an intervention for psychopathology, and there is the first evidence of its benefits [ 30 , 52 ]. The idea is that regularly answering ESM questions may stimulate awareness, reflection, and insight.…”

Recommendations for the use of long-term experience sampling in bipolar disorder care: a qualitative study of patient and clinician experiences

“…The experience sampling method (ESM) is an ecologically valid self-monitoring method that may overcome these shortcomings. Although originally developed for research (Myin-Germeys et al 2018), ESM has been advocated as a tool to promote self-management and resilience for patients in mental health care (Os et al 2017;Bos et al 2019;Wichers et al 2011). With ESM, patients monitor their daily experiences, moods, and symptoms on their smartphones several times a day (see Fig.…”

“…Importantly, patients and clinicians recognize the potential of ESM for clinical care while also noting the possibility of high assessment burden and symptom worsening (Bos et al 2019). Still, little is known about how patients and clinicians actually experience the addition of ESM to clinical care.…”