How far is clinical assessment from the bullseye? Using MEmind to compare clinical assessment with self-assessment in patients with depression and anxiety diagnosis

Background and objectives Technology based assessments are being used for screening and monitoring in a wide scope of medical specialties, including mental health field. Depression and anxiety are common disorders in which e-health tools can be useful. We aimed to compare clinician assessment of illness severity in patients with depression and anxiety diagnosis with computer-based self-assessment within 24 h of clinician evaluation via MEmind (www.memind.net), a novel web-tool. Methods From May 2014, adult patients attended in outpatient settings in Fundación Jiménez Diaz Psychiatry Department were registered in MEmind, a web tool designed for psychiatric assessment. During the recruitment, clinicians use CGI-S for patient assessment via MEmind and provide patients a code and password to use the web-tool. We selected those patients diagnosed with depression and/or anxiety who connected within 24 h of the clinical visit and complete in the web page GHQ and WHO-5 scales. We calculated a bivariate correlation for CGI-S, WHO-5 and GHQ-12. Results Of the 231 participants, 157 (68%) were diagnosed with anxiety disorders and 74 (32%) with depression. Using the Spearman Rho test for correlation, we found a low correlation between CGI-S and total WHO-5 (r = −0.192; p = 0.006) and between CGI-S and total GHQ-12 (r = 0.211; p = 0.002) and a good correlation between total WHO-5 and total GQH-12 (r = −0.606; p = 0.000). Conclusions We found a low correlation between clinician assessment and patients’ self-reports within 24 h of clinician evaluation. Factors that potentially influenced the degree of correlation related with patients, clinicians, measurements and technology are discussed.