What is it about?
People frequently have communication problems following stroke, and this can make it hard to monitor mood and mental health. The D-VAMS is a simple, tablet based instrument where people can report how they are feeling non-verbally, by moving sliders controlling facial expression images. A total score from 0 to 100 is returned, representing overall of pleasantness of mood, which can be used to aid depression screening.
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Why is it important?
People with communication problems are at particularly high risk of depression, yet few measures exist to help assess a person's emotional state non-verbally. The D-VAMS is a brief (< 5 minutes) set of seven non-verbal scales which give a profile and total mood score that can be used for clinical or research purposes. Aside from its utility as a screening instrument for depressed mood following stroke. The D-VAMS may also help researchers to include people with communication problems in their studies, so that wellbeing can be measured and interventions assessed in this group. D-VAMS is FREE, and can be downloaded from: tinyurl.com/lwqqfkj
Perspectives
As well as being a new way to help assess people's mood non-verbally, these dynamic scales represent a novel implementation that develops significantly on the Visual Analogue Scale concept, and takes better advantage of the capabilities offered by tablet technology.
Dr Paul Barrows
University of Derby
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Assessment of mood in aphasia following stroke: validation of the Dynamic Visual Analogue Mood Scales (D-VAMS), Clinical Rehabilitation, June 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0269215517714590.
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