Abstract
Depression is a burdensome and costly disease. Treatment is not sought by over half of depressed patients, and many who suffer remain depressed despite treatment. Furthermore, there is no single treatment efficacious for all patients, with optimal outcomes precluded by access, adherence, and patient satisfaction issues. The recent proliferation of telehealth solutions has increased access to care, especially during the COVID pandemic, but problems with several of its traditional types of delivery models still exist. Rather than the provision of traditional episodic mental health care, creative mental health solutions that can provide continuous care with frequent patient-provider interactions are urgently needed. This Perspective explores how digital health solutions enable the provision of continuous types of remote care to provide relief for some of the access and capacity problems exacerbated by requirements for face-to-face types of care.
Highlights
Depression has become one of the most burdensome diseases in the world in terms of societal and financial costs [1,2,3,4,5]
There is no definitive type of standard depression care, with some guidelines recommending psychotherapy and others naming pharmacotherapy as first-line depression agents [8,9,10]
Some who suffer from depression know they need care but do not want others to know they are in treatment, while others do not have time to devote to treatment or even know where to go to receive services [17]
Summary
Depression has become one of the most burdensome diseases in the world in terms of societal and financial costs [1,2,3,4,5]. This type of face-to-face telehealth visit provides care at scheduled appointment times but fails to allow for easy between-appointment monitoring of symptom improvement and, for those on antidepressants, side effect onset or worsening without scheduling and attending another episodic appointment.
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