Telemedical Care Program Insignificant for Patients with Certain Mental Health Disorders

Telemedicine care for patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder suffering from reduced quality of life is not a significant treatment concept, according to a recent trial published in BMC Psychiatry.

“Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are serious psychiatric disorders with a high disease burden, a high number of years of life lived with disability and a high risk for relapses and re-hospitalizations,” wrote Ulrike Stentzel, University Hospital Greifswald, Institute for Community Medicine, Section Epidemiology of Health Care and Community Health, Greifswald, Germany, and coinvestigators.

Reduced quality of life is a predicator for relapse in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Researchers aimed to examine if a telemedical care program could improve quality of life outcomes in participants through this prospective controlled randomized intervention trial Tecla.

A total of 118 participants, 104 with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and 48 with bipolar disorder, were recruited and randomized following a baseline assessment into an intervention group or a control group.

The intervention group received telemedical care, including personalized regular phone calls and text messages. There were no significant evaluated differences between the intervention and control groups.

Researchers used the WHOQOL-BREF, a shorter version of the World Health Organization Quality of Live subjective instrument, to measure the quality of life in participants. The sums of patients’ responses on psychical domain such as pain and sleep, psychological domain such as self-esteem, environment domain such as safety and security, and global value showing general health and life, were measured on a scale of 26 to 130, with higher scores indicating higher quality of life.

Effects were measured after six months, while researchers used linear regressions to calculate treatment time interactions.

Results showed that treatment time interactions were insignificant in the quality-of-life outcomes for patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which led researchers to conclude that the treatment did not have a notable effect.

“The telemedicine care concept Tecla was not significant for QoL (quality of life) in patients with severe psychiatric disorders,” researchers wrote.

“More important for the QoL [quality of life] is the general social support and the level of global functioning of the patients.”

—Erin McGuinness

Reference

Stentzel U, van den Berg N, Moon K, et al. Telemedical care and quality of life in patients with schizophrenia and disorder: results of a randomized controlled trial. BMC Psychiatry. 2021;21(1):318. Published 2021 Jun 29. doi:10.1186/s12888-021-03318-8