Short message service can be a promising tool for psychiatric patients and clinicians.

Short message service (SMS), commonly referred to as text messaging, allows instantaneous communication between mobile telephones and other systems via 160-character messages. SMS has a wide reach, and thus researchers and public health officials have considered using this platform for health-related communication. Today, as our society continues to integrate components of automation in various forms and levels of human interaction, and with the increasing ubiquity of mobile technology in health care, technology-delivered health interventions such as SMS offer a creative alternative that can be a valuable tool to assist mental health patients in their own treatment and recovery and for the mental health clinicians who are responsible for providing care and its delivery.