Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Aug 3, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Aug 9, 2018 - Oct 4, 2018
Date Accepted: Dec 12, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Digital Technology for Internet Access by Patients With Early-Stage Schizophrenia in Spain: Multicenter Research Study
Background:
Digital technology and social networks are part of everyday life in the current internet age, especially among young people. To date, few studies have been published worldwide on the pattern of use of digital technology devices and applications in patients with early-stage schizophrenia and even fewer comparing them with healthy participants (not using data from general population surveys) from the same demographic areas. In Spain, no such study has been carried out.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to analyze how patients with early-stage schizophrenia use internet and social networks compared with healthy participants matched by age and gender and also to examine which devices are utilized to access internet resources.
Methods:
A cross-sectional, multicentric study was carried out through a semistructured interview asking about the use of digital technology devices and internet. The sample comprised 90 patients and 90 healthy participants. The semistructured interview was conducted on 30 outpatients and 30 healthy subjects in each of the 3 different cities (Madrid, Alicante, and Cuenca). Student t test was used for continuous variables and chi-square test for categorical variables. In the case of ordinal variables, nonparametric Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis H tests for independent samples were performed to compare groups.
Results:
The results indicated that a large proportion of patients with early-stage schizophrenia have access to different digital devices and use them frequently. In addition, both groups coincide in the order of preference and the purpose for which they use the devices. However, a lower frequency of use of most digital technology devices was detected in patients compared with healthy participants. In the case of some devices, this was due to the impossibility of access and not a lack of interest.
Conclusions:
To our knowledge, this is the first study to analyze patterns of internet access and use of digital technology devices and applications in Spanish patients with early-stage schizophrenia compared with healthy participants from the same demographic areas. The results on significant access and use of digital technology and internet shown in this cross-sectional study will allow enhanced and more efficient treatment strategies to be planned, utilizing digital technology devices, for patients with early-stage schizophrenia.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.