Yang, Yong Sook, Ryu, Gi Wook, Choi, Mona · JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2019 · DOI
This review looked at research studies that used smartphones to track mood and stress in patients with various chronic illnesses, including ME/CFS. Researchers used apps or text-based systems to send prompts at random times throughout the day, asking patients to report how they were feeling in that moment. The review found that this method is practical and feasible for understanding how symptoms and emotions change during daily life.
For ME/CFS patients, EMA methods offer a way to capture real-time changes in mood and stress in daily life without requiring clinical visits, which can be difficult for those with severe fatigue. Understanding how psychological factors fluctuate alongside ME/CFS symptoms could help identify triggers and patterns that might guide treatment approaches. This methodology review demonstrates that smartphones are a feasible tool for collecting this data from ME/CFS populations.
This review does not prove that EMA findings change clinical outcomes or improve patient care; it only describes methodological options. The review also does not establish whether smartphone-based mood tracking is superior to other assessment methods, nor does it demonstrate adherence rates or sustained engagement with these tools in any specific patient population. No causal relationships between stress/mood and disease progression are established.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
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