This side of the project explores how integrating technology in treatments can contribute to compassion, how we can evaluate compassion in such treatments, and how therapists can be supported with guidelines to integrate technology in their treatment while fostering compassion. To do so, we will work together with mental healthcare professionals and clients to co-design and evaluate new ways of working with eMental health, centered on compassion. Scroll down for a list of publications!
Evaluating technology on compassion
To be able to quantitatively assess to what extent technology is perceived in later design and evaluation tasks as compassionate we have developed the ‘Compassionate Technology Scale’. Items for this scale were drafted based on current scientific literature on the elements of compassion. Through qualitative research, we have evaluated the item sample with clients, therapists, and eHealth developers, to see which items they find important, valuable and understandable. Based on this, we selected items for our scale, and tested these items quantitatively on validity and reliability with a larger sample.
New blended treatment way of working centered on compassion
Here, the focus is to create a shared vision and guidelines for compassionate blended treatment. It is important to focus on the roles of each of the key-players in this: the therapist, the client and the technology, and how compassion is a shared value for all elements of this triad. In semi-structured interviews with clients and professionals, we explored their experiences, values, and technology use, and linked these to a compassion framework. We also focused on matches and mismatches between the values of mental health professionals and their perception of how their mental healthcare organizations present technology. Furthermore, through co-design with patients and professionals from acute mental healthcare, we developed compassion-focused implementation materials for the meaningful use of smartwatches. This resulted in a cardset that is currently being evaluated in a single-case experimental design study (SCED).
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