Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jan 21, 2025
Date Accepted: Jun 20, 2025
The user experience of ecological momentary assessment and mood monitoring in Bipolar Disorder: a systematic review and meta-synthesis of qualitative studies
ABSTRACT
Background:
The perspectives and preferences of individuals with Bipolar Disorder (BD) will likely be crucial for the success of mood monitoring interventions, or for Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) as a method of data collection. This research has not previously been synthesised.
Objective:
This systematic review and meta-synthesis aimed to assess the user experience of mood monitoring and ecological momentary assessment procedures. This included: barriers and facilitators to use (for people with BD and for clinicians) and intended purpose.
Methods:
Systematic review and meta-synthesis of qualitative studies of participant, user and clinician experiences of mood monitoring and EMA for BD. We searched 8 electronic databases and included mixed-methods studies. Studies were rated for risk of bias in qualitative studies.
Results:
20 studies were identified. We identified 9 overarching concepts: adverse effects, barriers to mood monitoring, facilitators to mood monitoring, purpose of mood monitoring, sharing with others (negative), sharing with others (positive), clinician barriers/concerns, clinician facilitators/suggestions, desired features.
Conclusions:
We report key concepts that are likely to improve the user experience, engagement, attrition, usability and acceptability of EMA/mood monitoring protocols for people with BD. Fundamentally users wished to retain control over their data with a high degree of emphasis on customisability and personalisation.
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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.