Research reportProgress monitoring and feedback in psychiatric care reduces depressive symptoms
Section snippets
Research setting and participants
Participants were recruited from a 98 bed, private psychiatric hospital in Australia. Eligible participants were English speaking inpatients (60%) or day patients (40%) who were participating in the hospital's two week cognitive behavioral therapy program. The sample comprised of 1308 consecutive patients who participated in the trial; 408 who received feedback on their WHO-5 scores, 439 completed the WHO-5 routinely but did not receive feedback on scores until completion of the group, and a
Equivalence of groups
As patients were not randomized to groups, it was necessary to create equivalent cohorts. To reduce the skew of the data, a square root of WHO-5 scores at each day was taken. This score was used for all further WHO-5 analyses. Quality control charts revealed three therapy groups with outlying mean scores at Day 9 of therapy (i.e. three standard deviations beyond the mean). Upon qualitative inspection, two of those three groups were decided to be too small to be considered a therapy group (one
Discussion
The current study aimed to assess the effectiveness of monitoring patient progress and providing feedback about wellbeing in a group inpatient and day patient psychiatric setting. It was proposed that those patients who received feedback on their response to treatment would exhibit significant improvements in symptom relief and wellbeing, when compared to those who did not receive feedback. The study found, unexpectedly, that providing feedback on wellbeing did not significantly improve
Role of funding source
The current study was supported by a grant from the Medicare Private Safety and Clinical Improvement Incentive Pool. Medicare had no further role in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the paper for publication.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgment
Assistance and ongoing support from Moira Munro is greatly appreciated.
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