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Journal of Public Health Policy and Planning | Volume 3
April 08-09, 2019 | Zurich, Switzerland
Health Care and Neuroscience
International Conference on
A Call to Psychologists: Addressing mental health needs using the digital technology of
mental health applicaƟons
AM Pidgeon
Bond University, Australia
For over a decade, the psychological treatment
of mental health issues has been undergoing a
fundamental change. This change has been largely
driven by the continued significant unmet need
for mental health services and the availability of
digital technology such as the internet and mobile
devices. Individuals around the world are becoming
increasingly dependent on the internet to obtain
information and interact with services, due to
flexibility, convenience, choice, cost and time savings.
This dependence is becoming more evident as
individuals seeking mental health information and
support report preferring to access services online
rather than face-to-face services. The field of mobile
mental health (“m-Health”) is evolving rapidly with
an unprecedented growth of psychological tools on
the market including preventive and therapeutic
interventions. M-Health applications offer the
opportunity for mental healthcare delivery
anytime and anywhere overcoming geographical,
time based organizational barriers with low and
affordable costs. M-Health applications can be
used as a bridge between face-to-face therapy
sessions, improve adherence to out of therapy
activities while promoting patient autonomy. Given
the ever increasing demands and limited supply of
mental health services, coupled with barriers to care
including a patient’s desire for anonymity, indirect
financial costs and impaired access to mental health
services, the use of apps could promote mental
health service efficiency as well as supporting the
mental health system to achieve the promise of
providing equal access for equal need. The challenge
that psychology faces with the rapid increase of
m-health applications is the availability of low-quality
applications with a lack of an underlying evidence
base, a lack of scientific credibility and limited clinical
effectiveness. M-health application designers are
rarely psychologists and if they were, there would
be better accuracy of the content with evidence to
support the efficacy of the application. The barriers
for psychologists designing m-health applications
are typically a lack of technical skills and time. This
presentation will discuss the growing need for
psychologists to shift their philosophy-from seeing
what happens-to a prioritisation of designing and
evaluating m-health applications in the provision of
high quality clinical services to patients.
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