Effective mental health services rely on the multifaceted skills of the professionals delivering that care. The intrinsic need to demonstrate compassion, and empathy, for patients, alongside efficient care management places considerable demands upon care givers as well as those tasked with designing services.
With a rising demand for access to mental health services, healthcare providers face a difficult challenge to maintain the quality of care while increasing the scale of delivery to cope with these increasing pressures.
Technology can help support mental health practice; improve capacity; and facilitate access across mental health care pathways – but to remain effective clinicians need to maintain an appropriate balance when it comes to implementation. This means that the skillset required by mental health professionals is continually evolving.
For modern technology-enabled services to achieve the impact expected, mental health practitioners will need to gain the appropriate skills, and training, in order to ensure that they are suitably prepared to navigate these new approaches.
To date, many of the technologies that have been successfully implemented in mental health practice tend to relate to the introduction of electronic health records, for streamlining patient documentation and providing clinicians with administrative support.
More recently, however, the potential for technology to become much more closely integrated into mental health pathways has become evident. Evidence-led progammes, like those developed by SilverCloud Health, demonstrate the effectiveness of digital interventions for behavioural change therapies; [1] while integrated telehealth consultations – via mobile and online methods – are now routinely incorporated into many levels of mental health provision. Similarly, adaptive monitoring solutions, which incorporate machine learning and predictive algorithms, are beginning to accurately determine when patients may be in most need of intervention. These types of technology all provide the potential to more easily scale services allowing clinicians to treat a wider population, while still maintaining essential qualities of care.
Improving access to services is one area where technology can excel. The inability to access mental health services at an appropriate time, in an appropriate manner, remains hugely problematic, particularly in relation to younger populations. Technology-led services, designed around facilitating access, can greatly increase the uptake by underserved populations. Australia’s eheadspace, which is operated by the National Youth Mental Health Foundation, is an example of how technology can significantly broaden the availability of care provision. The service offers 12–25 year olds, and their family and friends, a safe, secure and anonymous place to talk to a professional – whenever and wherever they need it, via a range of telehealth and e-consultation technologies. This approach helps empower individuals to take charge of their own recovery, and unsurprisingly many young people feel more comfortable accessing the organisation’s services online, or by phone. [2]
In the UK, the recent Topol Review listed a number of key technologies that are poised to impact mental healthcare over the next 20 years: [3]
Telemedicine
Remote consultations are already having a profound impact upon mental health provision. Telehealth services allow practitioners to increase capacity and improve access to services for patients that might be in geographically, or logistically, underserved communities. Offering services remotely similarly improves convenience for patients increasing the likelihood of them accessing appropriate services.
Sensors/wearables
The ability to remotely monitor patients and generate data relating to their activity and conditions is becoming more widespread across the profession. Real-time, continuous monitoring of activity, sleep patterns, stress levels, heart rate etc provides a much more detailed picture of people’s overall lifestyle. As these devices become increasingly sophisticated they are providing the ability to more accurately identify risk factors.
Digital therapies
Mental health represents a huge growth market for digital therapeutics. Already the profession has access to some of the most evidenced therapeutic programs provided via digital channels.
Electronic health records (EHRs)
EHRs support mental health practitioners across many aspects of care. The ability to more accurately document patient conditions, and progression, facilitates efficient treatment. These systems also enable data-driven decision making, helping to ensure quality, and consistency, across care pathways.
Virtual reality
Virtual reality is having very positive results in many aspects of mental health treatment, particularly in the treatment of phobias and for providing innovative interventions.
While technology is beginning to provide new ways to deliver services; new treatment opportunities; and the ability to support patients in managing their own individual mental health – it can never remove the need for highly-trained practitioners. Across all aspects of healthcare, there is a need for clinicians who can help patients understand their own situations, and conditions, in order to provide effective diagnosis and treatment. Without this empathetic approach patient satisfaction and outcomes are destined to suffer.
The mental health profession is showing significant promise when it comes to technological intervention, but this will always need to be tempered with the need for human consultation, in order to manage conditions.
Practitioners entering mental health practice will need to prepare for these changes and specialist courses like the online Master of Mental Health, from Southern Cross University, can help provide the necessary skills to succeed in this changing landscape.
Sources
- Richards D, et al. Digital IAPT: the effectiveness & cost-effectiveness of internet-delivered interventions for depression and anxiety disorders in the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme: study protocol for a randomised control trial. BMC Psychiatry. 2018 Mar 2;18(1):59. doi: 10.1186/s12888-018-1639-5.
- https://headspace.org.au/our-services/eheadspace/
- https://topol.hee.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/HEE-Topol-Review-Mental-health-paper.pdf
- https://www.nhsconfed.org/-/media/Confederation/Files/Networks/MentalHealth/Technology-and-mental-wellbeing-V4-web-i.pdf
