Advancing social psychiatry in a fragmented world: Can information technology do it?

Abstract

Modern technology (internet, smartphones, etc.) already has an impact on communication and health care services throughout the world. Evidently, everyone knows what it means to be able to better communicate with new technology (such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.). The problem is not here. It is evident that science advances quickly and turns peoples’ lives upside down, even if these advances have never had much of an impact on social, cultural, and psychological dimensions of the individual, the family, and the social group. At what point, then, do these advances in science have an impact for us, the mental health professionals? We will soon find ourselves in a situation where we will be obliged to accept the new methods of communication being presented to us, not only by policy makers, but also by patients and their families. Therefore, we must look at how we both have been integrating the advances of Information Technology into social psychiatry, but also how we can do so in the future.