What is the Current and Future Status of Digital Mental Health Interventions?

Rosa Mª Baños,Rocío Herrero,Mª Dolores Vara

doi:10.1017/sjp.2022.2

Rosa Mª Baños, Rocío Herrero + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1017/sjp.2022.2

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Abstract

The prevalence of mental disorders continues to increase, especially with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although we have evidence-based psychological treatments to address these conditions, most people encounter some barriers to receiving this help (e.g., stigma, geographical or time limitations). Digital mental health interventions (e.g., Internet-based interventions, smartphone apps, mixed realities -virtual and augmented reality) provide an opportunity to improve accessibility to these treatments. This article summarizes the main contributions of the different types of digital mental health solutions. It analyzes their limitations (e.g., drop-out rates, lack of engagement, lack of personalization, lack of cultural adaptations) and showcases the latest sophisticated and innovative technological advances under the umbrella of precision medicine (e.g., digital phenotyping, chatbots, or conversational agents). Finally, future challenges related to the need for real world implementation of these interventions, the use of predictive methodology, and hybrid models of care in clinical practice, among others, are discussed.

Highlights

There is a growing consensus in today’s society about the urgent need to pay more attention to mental health
There is a large body of accumulated evidence on the efficacy and efficiency of Internet-based interventions (IBIs) for many psychological problems
Until a few years ago, most IBIs were delivered via computer

Summary

Introduction

There is a growing consensus in today’s society about the urgent need to pay more attention to mental health. The pandemic caused by COVID-19, among other factors, has highlighted the existing gaps in our health care, and especially in the resources available to deal with health problems. In the past 30 years, the scope of DMHIs for the delivery of mental health services has evolved exponentially, ranging from the framework of “eHealth”, through telemedicine or Internet-based interventions (IBIs; Ritterband et al, 2006), to “mHealth”, through mobile digital interventions such as smartphones or virtual or augmented reality applications (Miralles et al, 2020; Price et al, 2014; Wiederhold, 2015). Given the demand for mental health resources during the COVID-19 pandemic, all of these digital solutions have received particular interest because of the opportunities they provide in terms of accessibility, costeffectiveness, personalization, and attractiveness (Balcombe & De Leo, 2021). We first focus on IBIs and on other innovative approaches, such as smartphone apps, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR)

Objectives

Conclusion