Pilot Study on the Clinical Utility of the Tulsa Life Chart: A Graphical Representation of Patient Life History

Understanding the longitudinal course of mental health is critical for case conceptualization. One approach for capturing the complexity of an individual's illness course is to depict it graphically. The first attempt for this method was the National Institute of Mental Health Life Chart for Bipolar Disorder. Subsequent research indicated Life Charts are useful clinically and time- and cost-effective. Despite clinical utility and time and cost efficiency, this approach has not been widely adopted in the mental health field. Possible explanations are the prior focus on bipolar disorder, time required to collect information, and prior versions have not had automatic translation of the patient information into an image.

The Tulsa Life Chart (TLC) was developed by researchers at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research (LIBR). The TLC was developed to address weaknesses of previous life chart methods and help patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs) quickly identify patterns of mental health symptoms across diagnostic categories. To date only one formal exploration of the TLC has been conducted in a sample of individuals with mood, anxiety, eating disorders, and substance use disorders, which suggested that participants felt the TLC was helpful in understanding their mental health symptoms and was pleasant to complete. Unpublished focus groups with HCPs suggest HCPs believe the TLC could help to improve patient encounters by increasing understanding of patients and facilitating conversations. Based on these findings the goal of the proposed study is to examine clinical usability, utility, and feasibility in a pragmatic pilot trial.

The current trial will recruit individuals seeking treatment within the Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital and healthcare professionals involved with their care. Treatment-seeking patients who are invited to participate will be asked to complete the TLC soon after establishing care in a health system setting. Subsequently, the patient's HCP will review the chart during the intake process and complete several measures related to the chart and their experience (baseline assessment point). Patients and HCPs will engage in treatment as usual in between the TLC and assessment time points. Prior to or shortly following discharge/termination of treatment (approximately 4 to 12 weeks depending on the clinic), patients and HCPs will be asked to again complete questions to determine the TLC's usefulness during treatment. The overarching aim of the current study is to examine the usefulness of the Tulsa Life Chart for treatment-seeking individuals and healthcare professionals.