Determinants of experience & satisfaction in telehealth psychiatry during the COVID-19 pandemic for patients & providers.

Introduction: The objective of this study was to characterize the experiences and overall satisfaction of patients and providers with the March 2020 transition to telehealth in a psychiatric setting (telepsychiatry). The study also investigated how socio-demographic and clinical characteristics impact an individual's experiences and satisfaction with telepsychiatry. Methods: Responses were collected from 604 patients and 154 providers engaged in clinical care at one of three participating Johns Hopkins Medicine outpatient psychiatric clinics between January 2020-March 2021. Survey data were collected by self-report via Qualtrics or telephone follow-up. Results: Respondents were predominately female and White. Over 70% of patients and providers were generally satisfied with telepsychiatry. However, providers were more likely to favor in-person care over telepsychiatry for post-pandemic care 48% to 17% respectively, while 35% rated both modalities equivalently. Patients were more evenly divided with 45% preferring telepsychiatry compared to 42% for in-person care, and only 13% rating them equivalently. Among providers, technical difficulties were significantly associated with both less satisfaction and lower preference for telepsychiatry [odds ratio for satisfaction (ORS) = 0.12; odds ratio for preference (ORP) = 0.13]. For patients, factors significantly associated with both lower satisfaction and lower preference for telepsychiatry included technical difficulties (ORS = 0.20; ORP = 0.41), unstable access to the internet (ORS = 0.46; ORP = 0.50), worsening depression (ORS = 0.38; ORP = 0.36), and worsening anxiety (ORS = 0.41; ORP = 0.40). Factors associated with greater satisfaction and higher preference for telepsychiatry among patients included higher education (ORS = 2.13; ORP = 1.96) and a decrease in technical difficulties over time (ORS = 2.86; ORP = 2.35). Discussion: Patients and providers were satisfied with telepsychiatry. However, there were greater differences between them in preferences for continuing to use telepsychiatry post-pandemic. These findings highlight factors that influence patient and provider preferences and should be addressed to optimize the use of telepsychiatry in the future.

Editorial: The Enigma of "Real World" Mental Health Care.

Copeland et al.1 have analyzed the Great Smoky Mountains Study (GSMS) database to address an important question in health services research: Does the use of mental health services in childhood prevent the later occurrence of mental health disorders in adulthood? Their answer is, somewhat surprisingly, no. As the authors note, the treatment as prevention hypothesis is not only unsupported in their analyses, but there is also evidence of iatrogenic effects on the later development of substance use disorders, particularly among children with behavioral disorders.

Provider perceived barriers and facilitators to integrating routine outcome monitoring into practice in an urban community psychiatry clinic: A mixed-methods quality improvement project.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Although mental health clinics are under increasing pressure to demonstrate value and routine outcome monitoring (ROM) has become a mandated component of care, providers have been slow to adopt ROM into practice, with some estimating that less than 20% of mental health clinicians use it consistently in the United States. This article explores perceived barriers and facilitators to integrating ROM into practice among clinicians and administrators in a large urban US community psychiatry clinic. METHOD: One hundred and thirty-eight clinical and administrative staff were administered an anonymous web-based survey to elicit attitudes towards ROM. Responses were summarized descriptively and qualitatively synthesized into a conceptual model using inductive thematic analysis. RESULTS: Common barriers to integration included insufficient time to collect and/or use measures, not knowing what measures to use, measures being difficult to access, and insufficient training. Facilitators included increased access/ease of use, training and support, measure relevance/validity, and accountability. CONCLUSIONS: In order for psychiatry clinics to successfully implement ROM into practice, they must diagnose organization-side barriers and translate this knowledge into actionable quality improvement initiatives ranging from the infrastructural to the cultural.

Three Approaches to Understanding and Classifying Mental Disorder: ICD-11, DSM-5, and the National Institute of Mental Health's Research Domain Criteria (RDoC).

The diagnosis of mental disorder initially appears relatively straightforward: Patients present with symptoms or visible signs of illness; health professionals make diagnoses based primarily on these symptoms and signs; and they prescribe medication, psychotherapy, or both, accordingly. However, despite a dramatic expansion of knowledge about mental disorders during the past half century, understanding of their components and processes remains rudimentary. We provide histories and descriptions of three systems with different purposes relevant to understanding and classifying mental disorder. Two major diagnostic manuals-the International Classification of Diseases and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-provide classification systems relevant to public health, clinical diagnosis, service provision, and specific research applications, the former internationally and the latter primarily for the United States. In contrast, the National Institute of Mental Health's Research Domain Criteria provides a framework that emphasizes integration of basic behavioral and neuroscience research to deepen the understanding of mental disorder. We identify four key issues that present challenges to understanding and classifying mental disorder: etiology, including the multiple causality of mental disorder; whether the relevant phenomena are discrete categories or dimensions; thresholds, which set the boundaries between disorder and nondisorder; and comorbidity, the fact that individuals with mental illness often meet diagnostic requirements for multiple conditions. We discuss how the three systems' approaches to these key issues correspond or diverge as a result of their different histories, purposes, and constituencies. Although the systems have varying degrees of overlap and distinguishing features, they share the goal of reducing the burden of suffering due to mental disorder.

Child Affected by Parental Relationship Distress.

OBJECTIVE: A new condition, "child affected by parental relationship distress" (CAPRD), was introduced in the DSM-5. A relational problem, CAPRD is defined in the chapter of the DSM-5 under "Other Conditions That May Be a Focus of Clinical Attention." The purpose of this article is to explain the usefulness of this new terminology. METHOD: A brief review of the literature establishing that children are affected by parental relationship distress is presented. To elaborate on the clinical presentations of CAPRD, four common scenarios are described in more detail: children may react to parental intimate partner distress; to parental intimate partner violence; to acrimonious divorce; and to unfair disparagement of one parent by another. Reactions of the child may include the onset or exacerbation of psychological symptoms, somatic complaints, an internal loyalty conflict, and, in the extreme, parental alienation, leading to loss of a parent-child relationship. RESULTS: Since the definition of CAPRD in the DSM-5 consists of only one sentence, the authors propose an expanded explanation, clarifying that children may develop behavioral, cognitive, affective, and physical symptoms when they experience varying degrees of parental relationship distress, that is, intimate partner distress and intimate partner violence, which are defined with more specificity and reliability in the DSM-5. CONCLUSION: CAPRD, like other relational problems, provides a way to define key relationship patterns that appear to lead to or exacerbate adverse mental health outcomes. It deserves the attention of clinicians who work with youth, as well as researchers assessing environmental inputs to common mental health problems.

Planning Patient-Centered Health Homes for Medicaid Psychiatric Patients at Greatest Risk for Intensive Service Use.

This study identified characteristics of Medicaid psychiatric patients at risk of hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits to identify their service delivery needs. A total of 4,866 psychiatrists were randomly selected from the AMA Physician Masterfile; 62 % responded, 32 % met eligibility criteria and reported on 1,625 Medicaid patients. Patients with schizophrenia, substance use disorders, suicidal and violent ideation/behavior, and psychotic, substance use, or manic symptoms were at high risk for intensive service use, along with homeless and incarcerated patients. Patients with schizophrenia or psychotic symptoms represented 37 % of patients, but used 73 % of all hospital days and 61 % of all ED visits. Patients with substance use problems comprised 21 % of patients, but used nearly half of all ED visits. Our findings highlight opportunities to enhance treatments and interventions, and inform the development of patient-centered health homes to address the needs of patients at high risk for intensive service use.

APIRE Practice Research Network: accomplishments, challenges, and lessons learned.

The Practice Research Network (PRN) was established in 1993 to bridge the gap between the science base and the clinical practice of psychiatry by expanding the generalizability of findings and involving clinicians in the development and conduct of research. It began as a nationwide network of psychiatrists and has evolved to conduct large-scale, clinical and policy research studies using randomly selected samples of psychiatrists from the AMA Physician Masterfile. This paper provides an overview of major PRN initiatives and the impact of these studies. It describes the benefits to clinicians of participating in PRN research, as well as strategies developed to address key challenges.

Feasibility and acceptability of the DSM-5 Field Trial procedures in the Johns Hopkins Community Psychiatry Programs.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) contains criteria for psychiatric diagnoses that reflect advances in the science and conceptualization of mental disorders and address the needs of clinicians. DSM-5 also recommends research on dimensional measures of cross-cutting symptoms and diagnostic severity, which are expected to better capture patients' experiences with mental disorders. Prior to its May 2013 release, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) conducted field trials to examine the feasibility, clinical utility, reliability, and where possible, the validity of proposed DSM-5 diagnostic criteria and dimensional measures. The methods and measures proposed for the DSM-5 field trials were pilot tested in adult and child/adolescent clinical samples, with the goal to identify and correct design and procedural problems with the proposed methods before resources were expended for the larger DSM-5 Field Trials. Results allowed for the refinement of the protocols, procedures, and measures, which facilitated recruitment, implementation, and completion of the DSM-5 Field Trials. These results highlight the benefits of pilot studies in planning large multisite studies.

Treatment of anxiety disorders by psychiatrists from the American Psychiatric Practice Research Network.

OBJECTIVE: Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent in the United States, and if untreated, result in a number of negative outcomes. This study aimed to investigate psychiatrists' current treatment practices for patients with anxiety disorders in the United States. METHODS: Psychiatrist-reported data from the 1997 and 1999 American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education Practice Research Network (PRN) Study of Psychiatric Patients and Treatments (SPPT) were examined, focusing on patients diagnosed with anxiety disorders. Information related to diagnostic and clinical features and treatments provided were obtained. RESULTS: Anxiety disorders remain underdiagnosed and undertreated, since only 11.4% of the sample received a principal diagnosis of an anxiety disorder in a real world setting. Posttraumatic stress disorder was associated with particularly high comorbidity and disability, and social anxiety disorder was relatively rarely diagnosed and treated. Although combined pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy was commonly used to treat anxiety disorders, anxiolytics were more commonly prescribed than selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). CONCLUSIONS: These data provide a picture of diagnosis and practice patterns across a range of psychiatric settings and suggest that anxiety disorders, despite being among the most prevalent of psychiatric disorders remain underdiagnosed and undertreated particularly in respect of the use of psychotherapeutic interventions.

Testing DSM-5 in routine clinical practice settings: feasibility and clinical utility.

OBJECTIVE: This article describes the clinical utility and feasibility of proposed DSM-5 criteria and measures as tested in the DSM-5 Field Trials in Routine Clinical Practice Settings (RCP). METHODS RCP data were collected online for six months (October 2011 to March 2012). Participants included psychiatrists, licensed clinical psychologists, clinical social workers, advanced practice psychiatric-mental health nurses, licensed counselors, and licensed marriage and family therapists. Clinicians received staged, online training and enrolled at least one patient. Patients completed self-assessments of cross-cutting symptom domains, disability measures, and an evaluation of these measures. Clinicians conducted diagnostic interviews and completed DSM-5 and related assessments and a clinical utility questionnaire. RESULTS: A total of 621 clinicians provided data for 1,269 patients. Large proportions of clinicians reported that the DSM-5 approach was generally very or extremely easy for assessment of both pediatric (51%) and adult (46%) patients and very or extremely useful in routine clinical practice for pediatric (48%) and adult (46%) patients. Clinicians considered the DSM-5 approach to be better (57%) or much better (18%) than that of DSM-IV. Patients, including children age 11 to 17 (47%), parents of children age six to ten (64%), parents of adolescents age 11 to 17 (72%), and adult patients (52%), reported that the cross-cutting measures would help their clinicians better understand their symptoms. Similar patterns in evaluations of feasibility and clinical utility were observed among clinicians from various disciplines. CONCLUSIONS: The DSM-5 approach was feasible and clinically useful in a wide range of routine practice settings and favorably received by both clinicians and patients.

Using patient-reported measurement to pave the path towards personalized medicine.

OBJECTIVE: Given the potential and importance of personalized or individualized medicine for health care delivery and its effects on patients' quality of life, a plenary session was devoted to personalized medicine during the 19th Annual Conference of the International Society for Quality of Life Research held in October 2012 in Budapest, Hungary. This paper summarizes the three presentations and discusses their implications for quality-of-life research. METHODS: Reviews of the literature and presentation of empirical studies. RESULTS: Personalized screening for breast cancer. To individualize screening and only target those women with an increased risk for breast cancer, researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm perform a large population-based study to identify high-risk women based on lifestyle, genetics, mammographic morphology, and other markers as well as quality of life. Personalized support for treatment adherence. Inclusion of a simple, brief adherence measure into the clinical visit has demonstrated significant improvement in medication-taking behaviour and resultant improvement in health status. Personalized diagnosis of mental disorders. The DSM-5, the current manual for mental disorders, contains patient-based symptom and diagnosis severity measures that allow more individualized diagnosis than was hitherto possible. CONCLUSIONS: Personalized medicine will continue to be increasingly applied and holds the potential to improve health outcomes including quality of life. At the same time, it will invite a host of new ethical, practical, and psychosocial questions. Further reflection and discussion of how our field can embrace and address these emerging challenges is needed.

Treatment of anxiety disorders by psychiatrists from the American Psychiatric Practice Research Network

Objective: Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent in the United States, and if untreated, result in a number of negative outcomes. This study aimed to investigate psychiatrists' current treatment practices for patients with anxiety disorders in the United States. Methods: Psychiatrist-reported data from the 1997 and 1999 American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education Practice Research Network (PRN) Study of Psychiatric Patients and Treatments (SPPT) were examined, focusing on patients diagnosed with anxiety disorders. Information related to diagnostic and clinical features and treatments provided were obtained. Results: Anxiety disorders remain underdiagnosed and undertreated, since only 11.4% of the sample received a principal diagnosis of an anxiety disorder in a real world setting. Posttraumatic stress disorder was associated with particularly high comorbidity and disability, and social anxiety disorder was relatively rarely diagnosed and treated. Although combined pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy was commonly used to treat anxiety disorders, anxiolytics were more commonly prescribed than selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Conclusions: These data provide a picture of diagnosis and practice patterns across a range of psychiatric settings and suggest that anxiety disorders, despite being among the most prevalent of psychiatric disorders remain underdiagnosed and undertreated particularly in respect of the use of psychotherapeutic interventions. .

DSM-5 field trials in the United States and Canada, Part II: test-retest reliability of selected categorical diagnoses.

OBJECTIVE: The DSM-5 Field Trials were designed to obtain precise (standard error,0.1) estimates of the intraclass kappa asa measure of the degree to which two clinicians could independently agree on the presence or absence of selected DSM-5 diagnoses when the same patient was interviewed on separate occasions, in clinical settings, and evaluated with usual clinical interview methods. METHOD: Eleven academic centers in the United States and Canada were selected,and each was assigned several target diagnoses frequently treated in that setting.Consecutive patients visiting a site during the study were screened and stratified on the basis of DSM-IV diagnoses or symptomatic presentations. Patients were randomly assigned to two clinicians for a diagnostic interview; clinicians were blind to any previous diagnosis. All data were entered directly via an Internet-based software system to a secure central server. Detailed research design and statistical methods are presented in an accompanying article. RESULTS: There were a total of 15 adult and eight child/adolescent diagnoses for which adequate sample sizes were obtained to report adequately precise estimates of the intraclass kappa. Overall, five diagnoses were in the very good range(kappa=0.60­0.79), nine in the good range(kappa=0.40­0.59), six in the questionable range (kappa = 0.20­0.39), and three in the unacceptable range (kappa values,0.20). Eight diagnoses had insufficient sample sizes to generate precise kappa estimates at any site. CONCLUSIONS: Most diagnoses adequately tested had good to very good reliability with these representative clinical populations assessed with usual clinical interview methods. Some diagnoses that were revised to encompass a broader spectrum of symptom expression or had a more dimensional approach tested in the good to very good range.

DSM-5 field trials in the United States and Canada, Part III: development and reliability testing of a cross-cutting symptom assessment for DSM-5.

OBJECTIVE: The authors sought to document, in adult and pediatric patient populations, the development, descriptive statistics,and test-retest reliability of cross-cutting symptom measures proposed for inclusion in DSM-5. METHOD: Data were collected as part of the multisite DSM-5 Field Trials in large academic settings. There were seven sites focusing on adult patients and four sites focusing on child and adolescent patients.Cross-cutting symptom measures were self-completed by the patient or an informant before the test and the retest interviews, which were conducted from 4 hours to 2 weeks apart. Clinician-report measures were completed during or after the clinical diagnostic interviews. Informants included adult patients, child patients age 11 and older, parents of all child patients age 6 and older, and legal guardians for adult patients unable to self-complete the measures. Study patients were sampled in a stratified design,and sampling weights were used in data analyses. The mean scores and standard deviations were computed and pooled across adult and child sites. Reliabilities were reported as pooled intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) with 95% confidence intervals. RESULTS: In adults, test-retest reliabilities of the cross-cutting symptom items generally were good to excellent. At the child and adolescent sites, parents were also reliablereporters of their children's symptoms,with few exceptions. Reliabilities were not as uniformly good for child respondents, and ICCs for several items fell into the questionable range in this age group. Clinicians rated psychosis with good reliability in adult patients but were less reliable in assessing clinical domains related to psychosis in children and to suicide in all age groups. CONCLUSIONS: These results show promising test-retest reliability results for this group of assessments, many of which are newly developed or have not been previously tested in psychiatric populations

DSM-5 field trials in the United States and Canada, Part I: study design, sampling strategy, implementation, and analytic approaches.

OBJECTIVE: This article discusses the design,sampling strategy, implementation,and data analytic processes of the DSM-5 Field Trials. METHOD: The DSM-5 Field Trials were conducted by using a test-retest reliability design with a stratified sampling approach across six adult and four pediatric sites in the United States and one adult site in Canada. A stratified random sampling approach was used to enhance precision in the estimation of the reliability coefficients. A web-based research electronic data capture system was used for simultaneous data collection from patients and clinicians across sites and for centralized data management.Weighted descriptive analyses, intraclass kappa and intraclass correlation coefficients for stratified samples, and receiver operating curves were computed. The DSM-5 Field Trials capitalized on advances since DSM-III and DSM-IV in statistical measures of reliability (i.e., intraclass kappa for stratified samples) and other recently developed measures to determine confidence intervals around kappa estimates. RESULTS: Diagnostic interviews using DSM-5 criteria were conducted by 279 clinicians of varied disciplines who received training comparable to what would be available to any clinician after publication of DSM-5.Overall, 2,246 patients with various diagnoses and levels of comorbidity were enrolled,of which over 86% were seen for two diagnostic interviews. A range of reliability coefficients were observed for the categorical diagnoses and dimensional measures. CONCLUSIONS: Multisite field trials and training comparable to what would be available to any clinician after publication of DSM-5 provided "real-world" testing of DSM-5 proposed diagnoses.

Dimensional approaches to psychiatric diagnosis in DSM-5.

BACKGROUND: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is the compendium of disorder listings and diagnostic criteria used by clinicians in the United States and many other countries. The forthcoming fifth edition of the manual (DSM-5) represents an opportunity to not only update diagnostic information in concert with recent advances in the science and practice of psychiatry, but also to more strongly consider the integration of systematically gathered patient self-assessments of symptom severity. AIMS OF THE STUDY: To present information on planned changes to the DSM diagnostic assessment strategies that incorporate patient-reported data. METHODS: Activities of the DSM-5 work groups and study groups related to patient-reported assessments are summarized. These activities include critical reviews of past research, reviews of assessment instruments, development of assessment strategies incorporating dimensional assessments of patients' clinical symptoms, and testing of proposed strategies. RESULTS: Limitations of the current DSM diagnostic assessment system are discussed. With the current approach to diagnosis used in DSM-IV, clinicians must decide whether a patient meets the diagnostic criteria set forth for a disorder and then diagnose the disorder as present or absent. This categorical approach to the diagnostic threshold constricts the range of clinical information that may be of high importance to treatment planning, prognosis, and monitoring treatment outcomes. Advantages to incorporation of a dimensional assessment strategy are also discussed. A dimensional approach to psychiatric diagnosis provides clinicians with more information, and with standardized dimensional rating scales, can give patient self-reports a greater role in the clinical process. A description of the proposed methods for integrating dimensional assessments into DSM-5 is presented. Initial pilot testing of these changes to DSM indicate that clinicians and patients/patient informants found the dimensional measures to be useful, simple, and relevant to clinical care. DISCUSSION: The introduction of patient-reported symptom assessments as part of the DSM would represent a major change in psychiatric practice, with implications for patient care, mental health policy, and health care funding. The ultimate goal of such a change is to increase patient satisfaction with care and improve treatment outcomes. These goals will be the subject of continuing evaluation after the DSM-5 is published. IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH CARE PROVISION AND USE: The use of patient-reported dimensional assessments of symptom severity will aid in more comprehensive and systematized characterizations of baseline clinical status and subsequent changes in clinical status with treatment. IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH POLICIES: The use of principles of evidence-based medicine and measurement-based care are likely to increase in the United States as health care reform measures are put into place. The DSM-5 proposals for patient-reported measures can serve as an initial method for gauging the outcomes of treatments. IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH: As with previous editions of the DSM, the changes implemented in DSM-5 will continue to be the focus of research efforts after publication. Results from this research will serve as the basis for further refinements in measurement recommendations.