An Open Trial of a Smartphone-assisted, Adjunctive Intervention to Improve Treatment Adherence in Bipolar Disorder

We evaluated the feasibility and acceptability of a novel, 12-week, adjunctive, smartphone-assisted intervention to improve treatment adherence in bipolar disorder. Eight participants completed 4 in-person individual therapy sessions over the course of a month, followed by 60 days of twice-daily ecological momentary intervention (EMI) sessions, with a fifth in-person session after 30 days and a sixth in-person session after 60 days. Perceived credibility of the intervention and expectancy for change were adequate at baseline, and satisfaction on completion of the intervention was very high. Participants demonstrated good adherence to the intervention overall, including excellent adherence to the in-person component and fair adherence to the smartphone-facilitated component. Qualitative feedback revealed very high satisfaction with the in-person sessions and suggested a broad range of ways in which the EMI sessions were helpful. Participants also provided suggestions for improving the intervention, which primarily related to the structure and administration of the EMI (smartphone-administered) sessions. Although this study was not designed to evaluate treatment efficacy, most key outcome variables changed in the expected directions from pretreatment to posttreatment, and several variables changed significantly over the course of the in-person sessions or during the EMI phase. These findings add to the small but growing body of literature suggesting that EMIs are feasible and acceptable for use in populations with bipolar disorder.