‘I think of it as a ‘distal’ outcome—and I am very grateful‘
The benefits of ACLP’s mentorship program are acknowledged by early career mentees—but also, sometimes, many years later by those rather more established in their careers.
One such grateful beneficiary is Joseph Cerimele, MD, MPH, who was one of the first to be mentored under the program by the Academy’s first researcher mentor, Kurt Kroenke, MD, MACP.
A project they both worked on has just been published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The project has taken several years because of the duration of the clinical trial that started in 2016, and because it needed
outcome data from the trial sample.
“I think of it as a ‘distal’ outcome to the ACLP mentorship program,” says Dr. Cerimele, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine, and deputy editor to the Journal of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (JACLP).
“The quality of this report was significantly improved by Dr. Kroenke’s involvement and mentorship, even several years after the end of the formal mentoring relationship. I am very grateful to the ACLP program and to Dr. Kroenke.”
With Dr. Kroenke, Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research, Regenstrief Institute, Indiana University School of Medicine, et al, Dr. Cerimele compiled a research report The Patient Mania Questionnaire (PMQ-9): a Brief Scale for Assessing and Monitoring Manic Symptoms providing an effective measurement-based care tool for bipolar disorder based on patient-reported manic symptoms.
“Combined with the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) measure of depressive symptoms, this brief measure could inform measurement-based care for individuals with bipolar disorder in primary care and mental health care settings given its ease of administration and familiar self-report response format,” say the researchers.
The Joint Commission requires behavioral health organizations to assess outcomes “through the use of a standardized tool or instrument”, says their report, and guidelines recommend measurement-based care (MBC) in the treatment of individuals with depressive and anxiety disorders. Less is known about MBC for individuals with bipolar disorder, which includes episodic and/or mixed depressive and manic symptoms.
Because manic and depressive symptoms commonly co-occur in individuals with bipolar disorder, providing MBC for bipolar disorder would involve assessing both symptom domains, though no patient reported manic symptom measure is widely adopted.
Notably, individuals with bipolar disorder often initially present to primary care, and similar proportions of individuals with bipolar disorder are treated in primary care and specialty settings, making acceptability in primary care a high priority for any measure used in MBC.