I work at the Mental Health Foundation and am undertaking a literature search about the use of technology for mental health assessments for our Policy and Advocacy Manager.
She has asked "whether there is any evidence/research about the impact of using technology (e.g., AV links) in mental health assessments/examinations compared to face-to-face assessments. Impacts can be both negative (e.g., prejudice, discrimination, ineffective assessment, cause more distress especially for MÄori) and positive (practical, efficient) but a key question is who perceives these benefits. Any leads or suggestions would be very helpful.â
Is anyone aware of any NZ research?
Iâve been in touch with Te Pou, Hinz (who suggested joining this network) and HQSC and have searched various databases and search engines. Iâve found a lot of more general research, and some studies which compare F2F and telehealth approaches. But almost nothing about the impacts described above.
My deadline is the end of April, but there may be some flexibility.
Iâm unsure of the peer-reviewed literature basis here, but two organisations that will know it well are Mentemia and Just A Thought. You could get in touch with them!
Hi Helena. I know an academic colleague who might be able to help you. I suspect youâre right that there isnât a lot on the specific topic youâre looking for but my colleague might be able to point you in the right direction. Whatâs your email address so I can e-introduce you to her?
Warm regards
Karen
While not directly related, Amy Chan and I published an integrative literature review, which focused on the perception of service users using mental health apps.
Chan, A.H.Y. & Honey, M.L.L. (2021). User perceptions of mobile digital apps for mental health: Acceptability and usability: An integrative review. Journal of Psychiatric & Mental Health Nursing, 00,1â22.doi: 10.1111/jpm.12744.
I donât know if this answers your question, but Iâll take a stab at it anyway:
In the early 2000s (back in the UK) I was involved with a project collecting data regarding people living in care facilities that suffered from various mental problems. The lead clinician was a Dr Dawn Heather.
As I recall the carers kept diaries for each patient, and over time, learned to predict the cycles that their patients went through, the diary entries would become like; âI think X is close to another episode, this is how they behaved 3 days before that episode last yearâ. The evidence was there in the diary, but not in a way that could be used by IT systems.
The idea at the time was, that we would require that the carers to enter the data in a highly conformed manner, probably in the form of a complex questionnaire. We could then build behavioural projections based on that data, possibly finding ways to prevent episodes. At the very least you get consistency of care across multiple carers (who could be alerted to red flags)
There were several downsides:
You canât make someone calmly run through a Q&A, when theyâve just had to deal with an extremely difficult situation. And itâs often difficult to not prejudice is persons responses in such forms.
Computers in such care facilities donât last long.
Carers have enough on their plate.
However that was nearly 20 years ago. Technology and particularly natural language processing and machine learning have come a long way, If we could scan the diaries, process them for specific phrases and put those phrases on a timeline we could end up with the same solution without changing the workload on the carers.
The person whoâs idea this was is, Dr Dawn Heather. Like I said this was several years ago, but sheâs still kicking about on twitter if you want to reach her. Also if you actually want to build this, give me a yell as well!
