John A Naslund1, Pattie P Gonsalves2,3, Oliver Gruebner4,5, Sachin R Pendse6,7, Stephanie L Smith8, Amit Sharma6, Giuseppe Raviola1,9. 1. Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, 641 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA, 02115, USA. 2. Sangath, New Delhi, India. 3. Sangath, Porvorim, Goa, India. 4. Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. 5. Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. 6. Microsoft Research India, Bangalore, India. 7. Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Interactive Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA. 8. Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. 9. Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
Abstract
PURPOSE: Globally, individuals living with mental disorders are more likely to have access to a mobile phone than mental health care. In this commentary, we highlight opportunities for expanding access to and use of digital technologies to advance research and intervention in mental health, with emphasis on the potential impact in lower resource settings. RECENT FINDINGS: Drawing from empirical evidence, largely from higher income settings, we considered three emerging areas where digital technology will potentially play a prominent role: supporting methods in data science to further our understanding of mental health and inform interventions, task sharing for building workforce capacity by training and supervising non-specialist health workers, and facilitating new opportunities for early intervention for young people in lower resource settings. Challenges were identified related to inequities in access, threats of bias in big data analyses, risks to users, and need for user involvement to support engagement and sustained use of digital interventions. SUMMARY: For digital technology to achieve its potential to transform the ways we detect, treat, and prevent mental disorders, there is a clear need for continued research involving multiple stakeholders, and rigorous studies showing that these technologies can successfully drive measurable improvements in mental health outcomes.
PURPOSE: Globally, individuals living with mental disorders are more likely to have access to a mobile phone than mental health care. In this commentary, we highlight opportunities for expanding access to and use of digital technologies to advance research and intervention in mental health, with emphasis on the potential impact in lower resource settings. RECENT FINDINGS: Drawing from empirical evidence, largely from higher income settings, we considered three emerging areas where digital technology will potentially play a prominent role: supporting methods in data science to further our understanding of mental health and inform interventions, task sharing for building workforce capacity by training and supervising non-specialist health workers, and facilitating new opportunities for early intervention for young people in lower resource settings. Challenges were identified related to inequities in access, threats of bias in big data analyses, risks to users, and need for user involvement to support engagement and sustained use of digital interventions. SUMMARY: For digital technology to achieve its potential to transform the ways we detect, treat, and prevent mental disorders, there is a clear need for continued research involving multiple stakeholders, and rigorous studies showing that these technologies can successfully drive measurable improvements in mental health outcomes.
Entities:
Keywords:
Artificial intelligence; Big data; Digital technology; Early intervention; Global mental health; Task sharing
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