Text Message Exchanges between Older Adults With Serious Mental Illness and Older Certified Peer Specialists in a Smartphone-Supported Self-Management Intervention

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Psychiatr Rehabil J
• Personal Author:
  Fortuna, Karen L. ; Naslund, John A. ; Aschbrenner, Kelly A. ; Lohman, Matthew C. ; Storm, Marianne ; Batsis, John A. ; Bartels, Stephen J.
• Description:
  Objective:
  
  To identify the strategies peer specialists use to provide illness self-management support for older adults with serious mental illness (SMI) through text messaging.
  
  Methods:
  
  Transcripts of text message exchanges were analyzed between eight older adult participants with SMI who completed the PeerTECH intervention and three older adult certified peer specialists who delivered the 12-week program. Text message analyses explored themes relevant to peer support and health behavior change. Quantitative data comprised frequency of text messages by either the peer or consumer.
  
  Results:
  
  Consumers (N=8) had a mean age of 68.8 years (SD=4.9) and were mainly women (88%), White (100%), and married (75%). Certified peer specialists (N=3) were all aged 55 years or older, 100% were female, and 66% identified as White and 33% identified as African-American. Overall, peers sent 215 text messages while consumers sent 141 text messages. We identified four themes in the peer specialist-consumer text message exchanges on different aspects of illness self-management, including health behavior change, self-management therapeutic techniques, engagement in health technology, and peer support.
  
  Conclusions and Implications for Practice:
  
  This exploratory qualitative study offers preliminary support that peers are able to use text messages to support the delivery of a peer-delivered home-based medical and psychiatric self-management intervention. Certified peer specialists can potentially provide a range of illness self-management support to older adults with SMI via text messaging. These findings will inform the development of standardized peer text messaging services to augment evidence-based illness self-management interventions for older adults with SMI.
  
  Impact:
  
  This study offers preliminary support that certified peer specialists’ services can potentially be advanced with the use of text messaging to provide illness self-management support to older adults with SMI.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Aged Allied Health Personnel Article Female Humans Illness Self-management Male Mental Disorders MHealth Middle Aged Peer Group Peer Support Professional-Patient Relations Psychiatric Rehabilitation Qualitative Research Self-Management Serious Mental Illness Smartphone Text Messaging

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• Source:
  Psychiatr Rehabil J. 42(1):57-63
• Pubmed ID:
  30010355
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC6335192
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  National Institutes of Health; National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCTAS)/ ; T32 MH073553/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/United States ; National Institute of Mental Health/ ; U48 DP005018/DP/NCCDPHP CDC HHS/United States ; National Institutes of Health; National Institute on Aging/ ; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/ ; K23 AG051681/AG/NIA NIH HHS/United States ; Norwegian Research Council/
• Volume:
  42
• Issue:
  1
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:63b5b318ec363787aee934c8d0b4d9f6b892890a4f0e14a72c5abc9967529a92
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/76266/cdc_76266_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 122.00 KB ]