As the COVID-19 pandemic has largely increased the utilization of telehealth, mobile mental health technologies – such as smartphone apps, vir­tual reality, chatbots, and social media – have also gained attention. These digital health technologies offer the potential of accessible and scalable interventions that can augment traditional care. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive update on the overall field of digital psychiatry, covering three areas. First, we outline the relevance of recent technological advances to mental health research and care, by detailing how smartphones, social media, artificial intelligence and virtual reality present new opportunities for “digital phenotyping” and remote intervention. Second, we review the current evidence for the use of these new technological approaches across different mental health contexts, covering their emerging efficacy in self-management of psychological well-being and early intervention, along with more nascent research supporting their use in clinical management of long-term psychiatric conditions – including major depression; anxiety, bipolar and psychotic disorders; and eating and substance use disorders – as well as in child and adolescent mental health care. Third, we discuss the most pressing challenges and opportunities towards real-world implementation, using the Integrated Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (i-PARIHS) framework to explain how the innovations themselves, the recipients of these innovations, and the context surrounding innovations all must be considered to facilitate their adoption and use in mental health care systems. We conclude that the new technological capabilities of smartphones, artificial intelligence, social media and virtual reality are already changing mental health care in unforeseen and exciting ways, each accompanied by an early but promising evidence base. We point out that further efforts towards strengthening implementation are needed, and detail the key issues at the patient, provider and policy levels which must now be addressed for digital health technologies to truly improve mental health research and treatment in the future.

中文翻译：

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不断发展的数字精神病学领域：应用程序、社交媒体、聊天机器人和虚拟现实的当前证据和未来

随着 COVID-19 大流行大大增加了远程医疗的利用率，移动心理健康技术（例如智能手机应用程序、虚拟现实、聊天机器人和社交媒体）也受到了关注。这些数字健康技术提供了可访问且可扩展的干预措施的潜力，可以增强传统护理。在本文中，我们提供了数字精神病学整个领域的全面更新，涵盖三个领域。首先，我们通过详细介绍智能手机、社交媒体、人工智能和虚拟现实如何为“数字表型”和远程干预提供新的机会，概述了最新技术进步与心理健康研究和护理的相关性。其次，我们回顾了在不同心理健康背景下使用这些新技术方法的当前证据，涵盖它们在心理健康自我管理和早期干预方面的新功效，以及支持它们在临床管理中使用的更多新兴研究。长期精神疾病——包括重度抑郁症；焦虑症、双相情感障碍和精神障碍；饮食和药物滥用障碍，以及儿童和青少年心理保健。第三，我们讨论了现实世界实施中最紧迫的挑战和机遇，利用卫生服务研究实施综合促进行动 (i-PARIHS) 框架来解释创新本身、这些创新的接受者以及周围的背景。必须考虑所有创新，以促进其在精神卫生保健系统中的采用和使用。我们的结论是，智能手机、人工智能、社交媒体和虚拟现实的新技术能力已经以不可预见和令人兴奋的方式改变了心理健康护理，每种方式都伴随着早期但有希望的证据基础。我们指出需要进一步努力加强实施，并详细说明了数字健康技术现在必须解决的患者、提供者和政策层面的关键问题，以真正改善未来的精神健康研究和治疗。