Table 4 Practical discussion points for clinicians and patients to consider before starting ESM in treatment, based on the findings of the present study
1: Determine rationale of ESM | |
|---|---|
Desirability of ESM | Do both patient and clinician agree that ESM is helpful and doable? |
Goal of ESM | What do patient and clinician hope to gain from ESM? How does it fit into the patients’ current treatment goals? |
2: Manage expectations | Â |
Risk of negative effects | Are patient or clinician apprehensive of any negative effects (e.g., mood worsening, pre-occupation with disorder)? What can the patient do if these occur? |
Burden | Is it okay if patients’ occasionally miss assessments, and how often? |
Feedback | What can patient and clinician expect to learn from the ESM feedback, and what not? |
3: Determine the ESM protocol | |
Feasibility of the monitoring | What frequency and duration of assessments is necessary to meet the goal and remain feasible for both patient and clinician? |
Content of the assessments | What should the ESM diary include to meet the goal? |
Need for weekly mood questionnaires | Is weekly monitoring for episodes necessary? |
Desirability of alerts to patient and/or clinician | Do patient and clinician want to be informed of elevated scores? |
4: Determine level of involvement of clinician | |
Data access | What data is the clinician allowed to examine and how often? |
Degree of contact through ESM | Does the patient contact the clinician in case of elevated scores or alerts, or vice versa? What happens if patients indicate elevated scores? |
5: Facilitate interpretation of personalized feedback | |
Frequency of feedback | How often is the personalized feedback discussed? |
Content of feedback | Which data are discussed? Is it necessary to discuss all the feedback every session, or only parts of it? |
Interpretation of feedback | Can the clinician help the patient to read the graphs? How do both interpret the feedback, and are there meaningful differences therein? |
6: Evaluate regularly | |
Usefulness and feasibility of ESM | Does the current ESM protocol still meet its intended goal or does it needs to be adapted? Is it still feasible for the patient? |
Negative effects | Have any negative effects of ESM occurred and (how) can the patient cope with them? |