Measuring the Patient Experience of Mental Health Care: A Systematic and Critical Review of Patient-Reported Experience Measures.

BACKGROUND: There is growing concern about measuring patient experience with mental health care. There are currently numerous patient-reported experience measures (PREMs) available for mental health care, but there is little guidance for selecting the most suitable instruments. The objective of this systematic review was to provide an overview of the psychometric properties and the content of available PREMs. METHODS: A comprehensive review following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines was conducted using the MEDLINE database with no date restrictions. The content of PREMs was analyzed using an inductive qualitative approach, and the methodological quality was assessed according to Pesudovs quality criteria. RESULTS: A total of 86 articles examining 75 PREMs and totaling 1932 items were included. Only four PREMs used statistical methods from item response theory (IRT). The 1932 items covered seven key mental health care domains: interpersonal relationships (22.6%), followed by respect and dignity (19.3%), access and care coordination (14.9%), drug therapy (14.1%), information (9.6%), psychological care (6.8%) and care environment (6.1%). Additionally, a few items focused on patient satisfaction (6.7%) rather than patient experience. No instrument covered the latent trait continuum of patient experience, as defined by the inductive qualitative approach, and the psychometric properties of the instruments were heterogeneous. CONCLUSION: This work is a critical step in the creation of an item library to measure mental health care patient-reported experience that will be used in France to develop, validate, and standardize item banks and computerized adaptive testing (CAT) based on IRT. It will also provide internationally replicable measures that will allow direct comparisons of mental health care systems. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT02491866.

Modeling a linkage between blood transcriptional expression and activity in brain regions to infer the phenotype of schizophrenia patients.

Hundreds of genetic loci participate to schizophrenia liability. It is also known that impaired cerebral connectivity is directly related to the cognitive and affective disturbances in schizophrenia. How genetic susceptibility and brain neural networks interact to specify a pathological phenotype in schizophrenia remains elusive. Imaging genetics, highlighting brain variations, has proven effective to establish links between vulnerability loci and associated clinical traits. As previous imaging genetics works in schizophrenia have essentially focused on structural DNA variants, these findings could be blurred by epigenetic mechanisms taking place during gene expression. We explored the meaningful links between genetic data from peripheral blood tissues on one hand, and regional brain reactivity to emotion task assayed by blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging on the other hand, in schizophrenia patients and matched healthy volunteers. We applied Sparse Generalized Canonical Correlation Analysis to identify joint signals between two blocks of variables: (i) the transcriptional expression of 33 candidate genes, and (ii) the blood oxygen level-dependent activity in 16 region of interest. Results suggested that peripheral transcriptional expression is related to brain imaging variations through a sequential pathway, ending with the schizophrenia phenotype. Generalization of such an approach to larger data sets should thus help in outlining the pathways involved in psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia. IMAGING: SEARCHING FOR LINKS TO AID DIAGNOSIS: Researchers explore links between the expression of genes associated with schizophrenia in blood cells and variations in brain activity during emotion processing. El Chérif Ibrahim and Eric Fakra at Aix-Marseille Université, France, and colleagues have developed a method to relate the expression levels of 33 schizophrenia susceptibility genes in blood cells and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data obtained as individuals carry out a task that triggers emotional responses. Although they found no significant differences in the expression of genes between the 26 patients with schizophrenia and 26 healthy controls they examined, variations in activity in the superior temporal gyrus were strongly linked to schizophrenia-associated gene expression and presence of disease. Similar analyses of larger data sets will shed further light on the relationship between peripheral molecular changes and disease-related behaviors and ultimately, aid the diagnosis of neuropsychiatric disease.

[Benefit of mortality and morbidity reviews in psychiatry]. / Intérêt des revues de mortalité et de morbidité en psychiatrie.

A mortality and morbidity (M&M) review consists in analysing, collectively and retrospectively, the cases of patients whose evolution has been marked by a complication or death. This analysis must question whether such an outcome could have been avoided, making it possible to identify the causes and correct the factors having contributed to its occurrence. After a presentation of the methodological and organisational principles, as well as the M&M reviews carried out in France, attention is turned to those performed in psychiatry and identifying the main perspectives for the discipline.

Psychometric properties of the Ruminative Response Scale-short form in a clinical sample of patients with major depressive disorder.

BACKGROUND: The Ruminative Response Scale (RRS)-short form is one of the most widely used measures of rumination, comprising ten items and two components: reflection and brooding. The aim of this study was to investigate RRS validity and reliability in a clinical sample of French patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Outpatients with a DSM-IV-TR diagnosis of MDD were recruited from a public academic hospital in France. Depressive symptoms were evaluated by the Beck Depression Inventory, anxiety by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory - state scale, and quality of life by the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analyses, item-dimension correlations, Cronbach's α-coefficients, Rasch statistics, and external validity were tested. Differential item functioning analyses were performed for sex. RESULTS: A total of 109 patients participated. The final reflection-brooding two-factor model of the RRS showed a good fit (root-mean-square error of approximation 0.041, comparative fit index 0.987, standardized root-mean-square residual 0.048) after removing one item (daily diary writing). Internal item consistency and reliability were satisfactory for the two dimensions. External validity testing confirmed that RRS scores were correlated with Beck Depression Inventory, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and SF-36 scores. There was no differential item functioning across sexes. CONCLUSION: These results demonstrated good scale reliability and validity for assessing rumination in patients with MDD.

Satisfaction of hospitalized psychiatry patients: why should clinicians care?

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between inpatient satisfaction and health outcomes, quality of life, and adherence to treatment in a sample of patients with schizophrenia, while considering key sociodemographic and clinical confounding factors. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted in the psychiatric departments of two public university hospitals in France. The data collected included sociodemographic information, clinical characteristics, quality of life (using the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey), nonadherence to treatment (Medication Adherence Report Scale), and satisfaction (a specific self-administered questionnaire based exclusively on patient point of view [Satispsy-22] and a generic questionnaire for hospitalized patients [QSH]). Multiple linear regressions were performed to assess the associations between satisfaction and quality of life and between satisfaction and nonadherence. Two sets of models were performed, ie, scores on the Satispsy-22 and scores on the QSH. RESULTS: Ninety-one patients with schizophrenia were enrolled. After adjustment for confounding factors, patients with better personal experience during hospitalization (Satispsy-22) had a better psychological quality of life (SF36-mental composite score, ß=0.37; P=0.004), and patients with higher levels of satisfaction with quality of care (Satispsy-22) showed better adherence to treatment (Medication Adherence Report Scale total score, ß=-0.32; P=0.021). Higher QSH scores for staff and structure index were linked to better adherence with treatment (respectively, ß=-0.33; P=0.019 and ß=-0.30; P=0.032), but not with quality of life. CONCLUSION: Satisfaction was the only factor associated with quality of life and was one of the most important features associated with nonadherence. These findings confirm that satisfaction with hospitalization should not be neglected in clinical practice and that it may improve the management of patients with schizophrenia.