Application of ecological momentary assessment in stress-related diseases

Kazuhiro Yoshiuchi¹^,3 , Yoshiharu Yamamoto² and Akira Akabayashi¹

¹Department of Stress Sciences and Psychosomatic Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

²Educational Physiology Laboratory, Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

³Department of Stress Sciences and Psychosomatic Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8655, Japan

author email corresponding author email

BioPsychoSocial Medicine 2008, 2:13doi:10.1186/1751-0759-2-13


Published:	11 July 2008

Abstract

Many physical diseases have been reported to be associated with psychosocial factors. In these diseases, assessment relies mainly on subjective symptoms in natural settings. Therefore, it is important to assess symptoms and/or relationships between psychosocial factors and symptoms in natural settings. Symptoms are usually assessed by self-report when patients visit their doctors. However, self-report by recall has an intrinsic problem; "recall bias". Recently, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has been proposed as a reliable method to assess and record events and subjective symptoms as well as physiological and behavioral variables in natural settings. Although EMA is a useful method to assess stress-related diseases, it has not been fully acknowledged, especially by clinicians. Therefore, the present brief review introduces the application and future direction of EMA for the assessment and intervention for stress-related diseases.