Effect of adding a patient computer-mediated symptom tracking system to a partial hospitalization treatment program.

摘要

Partial hospitalization is a treatment setting provided for individuals experiencing severe mental illness and requiring more intensive interventions than outpatient counseling (Song, Biegel, Johnsen, & Dowhower, 1995). Both the treatment group (n = 13) and the control group (n = 13) self-reported symptoms on pre- and posttests of the Beck Anxiety and Depression inventories. The treatment group additionally self-disclosed symptoms on an online computer-mediated symptom tracking program, psychTrackerRTM. Patient age was the only significant difference found when the demographic variables were compared. The age of patients who self-disclosed on psychTrackerRTM was significantly younger (M = 36.31) than that of the control group (M = 46). Research questions 1 and 2 examined if there were differences between the Beck inventories control and treatment group mean scores. The means were examined using paired samples t-tests. The results failed to reject the null hypotheses. Research questions 3 and 4 examined if there were differences between the mean scores of the Beck inventories when compared to the mean scores of psychTrackerRTM. The psychTracker RTM mean levels were compared for significance using the Wilcoxon test. The psychTrackerRTM pre- to posttest scores were found to have a monotonic linearity. The results of the Beck inventories were significantly different from pre- to posttest, so when comparing the Beck inventories to the psychTracker means, there was no similarity in the mean score differences T = 38, p .05 (Z = -.524, p = .60).