A method to calculate the personal impact of online exercises to improve the positive mental health of family caregivers of chronically ill patients

Abstract

Background: taking care of chronic or long-term patients at home is an arduous task. Non-professional caregivers suffer the consequences of doing so, especially in terms of their mental health. Performing some simple activities through a mobile phone app may improve their mindset and consequently increase their positivity. However, each caregiver may need support in different aspects of positive mental health. In this paper, a method is defined to calculate the utility of a set of activities for a particular caregiver in order to personalize the intervention plan proposed in the app. Methods: based on the caregivers' answers to a questionnaire, a modular averaging method is used to calculate the personal level of competence in each positive mental health factor. A reward-penalty scoring procedure then assigns an overall impact value to each activity. Finally, the app ranks the activities using this impact value. Results: the results of this new personalization method are provided based on a pilot test conducted on 111 caregivers. The results indicate that a conjunctive average is appropriate at the first stage and that reward should be greater than penalty in the second stage. Conclusions: the method presented is able to personalize the intervention plan by determining the best order of carrying out the activities for each caregiver, with the aim of avoiding a high level of deterioration in any factor.