How Do Patients Find Information About Bipolar Disorder?
Research type
Research Study
Full title
How Do Patients Find Information About Bipolar Disorder?
IRAS ID
160613
Contact name
Stefanie Hassel
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Aston University
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 4 months, 28 days
Research summary
The general public routinely uses the Internet as a source of information about health issues. In recent surveys, about 2/3 of Internet users in Germany, France, Denmark, Latvia, Japan or the US have searched for health information online (Harris 2002, Andreassen 2007). There are, however, only a few studies researching the use of the Internet as a source of health information by patients with serious mental illnesses. Most of these studies found that Internet access by patients with mental illnesses is quite limited, despite reports that a large majority of patients with serious mental illness want to learn more about their illness (Hallett 2013). Furthermore, educating patients about their illness is thought to be important because it may improve patients’ self-management skills, increase their use of medical services and improve their treatment adherence (Druss 2014, Rouget 2007, Vieta 2005). A study investigating the habits of high functioning patients with bipolar disorder revealed that education about their illness was a key strategy for staying well (Murray 2010). Given the range of media available, however, the communication preferences of patients with bipolar disorder need to be understood to better provide information on the illness in the future. This is important because the Internet could be a basis for new approaches to improve care for bipolar disorder, e.g., use of online personal health records (Druss 2012), online self-management tools (Proudfoot 2007, Barnes 2007), self-help forums (Bauer 2012) and diagnostic screening tools (Leykin 2012).
The aims of this project are to better understand how patients with bipolar disorder obtain information about their illness, to characterize the patients with bipolar disorder who use the Internet more thoroughly in terms of clinical history/illness severity and demographic variables, and understand the experience of those who seek information online about bipolar disorder. This project is part of an international, paper-based survey.REC name
West Midlands - Solihull Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/WM/0024
Date of REC Opinion
17 Feb 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion