Daily Support Through Texting Potentially Effective for People With Serious Mental Illness

People with serious mental illness (SMI) may benefit from receiving text messages from a member of their assertive community treatment (ACT) team, suggests areport inPsychiatric Services in Advance. ACT is a widely accepted model of team-based care for people with SMI.“Augmentation of care with [mobile texting] proved to be feasible, acceptable, safe, and clinically promising,” wrote Dror Ben-Zeev, Ph.D., of the University of Washington and colleagues. “When pandemics such as COVID-19 block the possibility of in-person patient-provider contact, evidence-bas ed texting interventions can serve a crucial role in supporting continuity of care.”A total of 49 patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression were randomly assigned to receive texts on a regular basis from a trained member of their ACT team (n=37) or “usual care,” which involved ACT without the added intervention (n=12). ACT team members met with each participant receiving the experimental treatment to build rapport and review how the texting intervention would work. Patients also received a training session regarding basic phone functions a nd texting. After this visit, the ACT team members provided daily support via text messages for 12 weeks during the team’s hours of operation. They were encouraged to add their own “personal touch” so that the texts did not seem bland or robotic.The intervention proved to be feasible: 95% of participants assigned to the mobile intervention comme...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Assertive community treatment bipolar disorder depression Dror Ben-Zeev mobile texting Psychiatric Services in Advance schizophrenia serious mental illness SMI team-based care Source Type: research