Telehealth Monitoring of Patients with Schizophrenia and Suicidal Ideation

Abstract

A telehealth system was developed to monitor risk following hospitalization for suicidal ideation. We hypothesized that 3 months of telehealth monitoring will result in a greater reduction in suicidal ideation. Veterans with schizophrenia admitted with recent suicidal ideation and/or a suicidal attempt were recruited into a discharge program of VA Usual Care with daily Health Buddy© monitoring (HB) or Usual Care (UC) alone. Fifteen of 25 were randomized to HB and 10 received UC. Daily adherence in the use of the HB system during months 1-3 was, respectively, 86.9%, 86.3%, and 84.1%. There were significant improvements in Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation scores in HB participants. There were no changes in depressive symptoms. Telehealth monitoring for this population of patients appears to be feasible.

Using telehealth to augment an intensive case monitoring program in veterans with schizophrenia and suicidal ideation: A pilot trial

“…The overall adherence for the remaining 20 participants for logging in daily to the telehealth system exceeded 80% for each of the 3 months while they were in the study. This is consistent with what was reported previously for the same population of Veterans (Kasckow et al 2015). …”

“…The current study also assessed acceptability; acceptability has not been reported previously in studies involving suicide monitoring with this population (Kasckow et al 2015). Negative statements indicated that patients at times became frustrated when communicating with a machine rather than with a human.…”

“…We had previously reported that when augmenting the Health Buddy telehealth system with VA Treatment as Usual, there were improvements in suicidal ideation in at-risk Veterans with schizophrenia and suicidal ideation (Kasckow et al, 2015). There have been very few studies examining the use of telehealth for monitoring Veterans at risk for suicide.…”

Real-time monitoring of nonlinear suicidal dynamics: methodology and a demonstrative case report

“…Patients may also be alerted, for example, with automatically generated e-mail or text messages that could also function as reminders of safety plans (Stanley and Brown, 2012). Accordingly, first tele-health projects have been implemented with promising results (Kasckow et al, 2015). This calls for a cooperative multi-center study in the development of early suicide warning systems.…”

Tele-Health Practice and Use in Psychiatry Nursing

“…25 Literatürde tele psikiyatri uygulamalarının; dikkat eksikliği ve hiperaktivite bozukluğunda, depresyonda, demansta, şizofrenide, intiharı önlemede, travma sonrası stres bozukluğunda, panik bozuklukta, madde bağımlılığında, yeme bozukluklarında ve sigara içmeyi önlemede etkili olduğunu gösteren çalışmalar bulunmaktadır. 11,[37][38][39][40][41] Bu etkinliğin yanı sıra tele psikiyatrinin kullanılamadığı bir tanı grubu ya da demografik özellik belirtilmemektedir. 27 Ancak, fiziksel ya da bilişsel engeli sebebiyle teknolojik ekipmanı kullanamayacak durumda olan bireyler için uygun bir tercih olmadığı belirtilmektedir.…”