2019 Volume 59 Issue 7 Pages 623-627
In order to understand a patient's condition from a psychosomatic perspective, temporal association between physical illness and psychosocial factors needs to be discussed. However, many psychosocial factors such as psychological stress are patient reported outcomes (PROs) and recall biases are inevitable when assessing PROs by using recalled self-reports, which is commonly adapted in clinical settings and even in research settings. Because ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has high ecological validity and an accurate time axis, which is important for temporal analyses, it is thought to be advantageous for evaluating psychosocial correlation, in particular, temporally rather proximal correlation. By using EMA, we have showed associations between tension-type headache exacerbation and psychological stress, tension-type headache and physical activity, and so on. Recently we investigated the relationship between depressive mood and behavioral pattern, and even tried to estimate momentary depressive mood from physical activity data. Ambulatory assessments including EMA will facilitate psychosomatic understanding of patients' pathological condition and will also provide findings which can lead to just-in-time adaptive intervention in the future.
