Background: In a growing number of countries worldwide, clinicians are sharing mental health notes, including psychiatry and psychotherapy notes, with patients. Objective: The aim of this study is to solicit the views of experts on provider policies and patient and clinician training or guidance in relation to open notes in mental health care. Methods: In August 2020, we conducted a web-based survey

Background: Depression is a major cause for disability worldwide, and digital health interventions are expected to be an augmentative and effective treatment. According to the fast-growing field of information and communication technologies and its dissemination, there is a need for mapping the technological landscape and its benefits for users. Objective: The purpose of this scoping review was to

Background: The review of collateral information is an essential component of patient care. Although this is standard practice, minimal research has been done to quantify collateral information collection and to understand how collateral information translates to clinical decision making. To address this, we developed and piloted a novel measure (the McLean Collateral Information and Clinical Actionability

Background: Although it has been well demonstrated that the efficacy of virtual reality therapy for social anxiety disorder is comparable to that of traditional cognitive behavioral therapy, little is known about the effect of virtual reality on pathological self-referential processes in individuals with social anxiety disorder. Objective: We aimed to determine changes in self-referential processing

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has been declared an international public health emergency, and it may have long-lasting effects on people’s mental health. There is a need to identify effective health behaviors to mitigate the negative mental health impact of COVID-19. Objective: The objectives of this study were to (1) examine the regional differences in mental health and COVID-19–related worry

Background: Bipolar disorder is a serious mental illness that results in significant morbidity and mortality. Pharmacotherapy is the primary treatment for bipolar disorder; however, adjunctive psychotherapy can help individuals use self-management strategies to improve outcomes. Yet access to this therapy is limited. Smartphones and other technologies have the potential to increase access to therapeutic

Background: There is growing interest in using mobile apps and online tools to support postsecondary student mental health, but most of these solutions have suboptimal user engagement in real-world settings. Poor engagement can limit long-term effectiveness and usefulness of these tools. Previous literature has proposed several theories that link factors such as low usability and poor user-centered

Background: Online interventions can be a cost-effective and efficient way to deliver programs to large numbers of people regardless of geographic location. However, attrition in web-based interventions is often an issue. Developing ways to keep participants engaged is important for ensuring validity and limiting potential biases. We developed a web-based dietary intervention as part of The My Food

The demand outstripping supply of mental health resources during the COVID-19 pandemic presents opportunities for digital technology tools to fill this new gap and, in the process, demonstrate capabilities to increase their effectiveness and efficiency. However, technology-enabled services have faced challenges in being sustainably implemented despite showing promising outcomes in efficacy trials since

Background: The emerging popularity of playing video games (gaming) as a hobby and as a professional sport raises awareness about both the benefits and possible downsides of the activity. Although a healthy and passionate hobby for most, a minority of gamers experience addiction-like symptoms and are considered to have gaming disorder (GD). GD has previously been found to be related to aversive conditions

Background: Antidepressants are known to show heterogeneous effects across individuals and conditions, posing challenges to understanding their efficacy in mental health treatment. Social media platforms enable individuals to share their day-to-day concerns with others and thereby can function as unobtrusive, large-scale, and naturalistic data sources to study the longitudinal behavior of individuals

Background: Previous meta-analyses have shown a significant relationship between working alliance and treatment outcome in general. Some studies have examined the relationship between working alliance and treatment outcome during telepsychotherapy, but to the best of our knowledge, no study has examined the mediating role of individual components of the working alliance. Objective: As part of a clinical

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted psychological health. Mindfulness training, which helps individuals attend to the present moment with a nonjudgmental attitude, improves sleep and reduces stress during regular times. Mindfulness training may also be relevant to the mitigation of harmful health consequences during acute crises. However, certain restrictions may necessitate the

Background: Most people affected by depression or anxiety disorders are treated solely by their primary care physician. Access to specialized mental health care is impeded by patients’ comorbidity and immobility in aging societies and long waiting times at the providers’ end. Video-based integrated care models may leverage limited resources more efficiently and provide timely specialized care in primary

Background: In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, many behavioral health services have transitioned to teletherapy to continue delivering care for patients with mental illness. Studies that evaluate the outcome of this rapid teletherapy adoption and implementation are pertinent. Objective: This single-arm, nonrandomized pilot study aimed to assess the feasibility and initial patient-level outcomes

Background: Opioid-related deaths constitute a problem of pandemic proportions in the United States, with no clear solution in sight. Although addressing addiction—the heart of this problem—ought to remain a priority for health practitioners, examining the community-level psychological factors with a known impact on health behaviors may provide valuable insights for attenuating this health crisis by

Background: University students with depression and anxiety do not easily receive or seek treatment; therefore, internet-based interventions have been suggested to be a promising way to improve treatment accessibility and availability. However, it has not been examined whether a guided, culturally adapted, transdiagnostic, internet-based intervention is effective for treating symptoms of depression

Background: The increasing demand for mental health care, a lack of mental health care providers, and unequal access to mental health care services have created a need for innovative approaches to mental health care. Digital device apps, including digital therapeutics, that provide recommendations and feedback for dealing with stress, depression, and other mental health issues can be used to adjust

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a number of negative health related consequences, including impacts on mental health. More than 22% of Canadians reported that they had felt depressed in the last week, in response to a December 2020 national survey. Given the need to physically distance during the pandemic, and the increase in demand for mental health services, digital interventions

Background: Emergency departments (EDs) have the potential to provide evidence-based practices for suicide prevention to patients who are acutely suicidal. However, few EDs have adequate time and personnel resources to deliver recommended evidence-based assessment and interventions. To raise the clinical standard of care for patients who are suicidal and seeking psychiatric crisis services in the ED

Background: COVID-19 continues to disrupt global health and well-being. In April-May 2020, we generated a digital, remote interactive tool to provide health and well-being resources and foster connectivity among community members through a text messaging platform. Objective: This study aimed to prospectively investigate the ability of a health system–based digital, remote, interactive tool to provide

Background: People living in rural and remote areas have poorer access to mental health services than those living in cities. They are also less likely to seek help because of self-stigma and entrenched stoic beliefs about help seeking as a sign of weakness. E-mental health services can span great distances to reach those in need and offer a degree of privacy and anonymity exceeding that of traditional

Background: Web-based assessments of mental health concerns hold great potential for earlier, more cost-effective, and more accurate diagnoses of psychiatric conditions than that achieved with traditional interview-based methods. Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the impact of a comprehensive web-based mental health assessment on the mental health and well-being of over 2000 individuals

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has escalated the global need for remotely delivered and scalable interventions after psychological trauma. A brief intervention involving a computer game as an imagery-competing task has shown promising results for reducing the number of intrusive memories of trauma—one of the core clinical symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. To date, the intervention has only

Background: Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) occurs at a higher frequency among military personnel than among civilians. A common symptom of mTBIs is cognitive dysfunction. Health care professionals use neuropsychological assessments as part of a multidisciplinary and best practice approach for mTBI management. Such assessments support clinical diagnosis, symptom management, rehabilitation, and return-to-duty

Background: The COVID-19 epidemic may elevate mental distress and depressive symptoms in various populations in China. Objective: This study investigates the levels of depression and mental distress due to COVID-19, and the associations between cognitive, behavioral, and psychosocial factors, and depression and mental distress due to COVID-19 among university students in China. Methods: A large-scale

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, people have been encouraged to maintain social distance. Technology helps people schedule meetings as remote videoconferencing sessions rather than face-to-face interactions. Psychologists are in high demand because of an increase in stress as a result of COVID-19, and videoconferencing provides an opportunity for mental health clinicians to treat current and

Background: Despite the high prevalence of child sexual offenses and the increasing amounts of available child sexual abuse material, there is a global shortage of preventive interventions focusing on individuals at risk of sexual offending. The web-based app Troubled Desire aims to address this shortage by offering self-assessments and self-management training modules in different languages to individuals

Background: People with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have faced unique challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research from the first two months of the pandemic suggests that a small proportion of people with OCD experienced worsening in their OCD symptoms since the pandemic began, whereas the rest experienced either no change or an improvement in their symptoms. However, as society-level

Background: Developmental assets provide a framework for optimizing development among adolescents but have not been studied in adolescents with chronic illness and comorbid depression, which is a group at risk for poor health outcomes. YouTube postings provide valuable insights to understand this understudied population. Objective: This study aims to explore asset development from the perspectives

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a notable increase in psychological distress, globally. Oman is no exception to this, with several studies indicating high levels of anxiety and depression among the Omani public. There is a need for adaptive and effective interventions that aim to improve the elevated levels of psychological distress due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Objective: This study aimed

Background: Mental health problems are prevalent among pregnant women, and it is expected that their mental health will worsen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the underutilization of mental health services among pregnant women has been widely documented. Objective: We aimed to identify factors that are associated with pregnant women’s intentions to seek mental health services. We specifically

Background: Evidence on technology-based psychological interventions (TBIs) for the treatment of depression is rapidly growing and covers a broad scope of research. Despite extensive research in this field, guideline recommendations are still limited to the general effectiveness of TBIs. Objective: This study aims to structure evidence on TBIs by considering different application areas (eg, TBIs for

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, special education schools for children in most areas of China were closed between the end of January and the beginning of June in 2020. The sudden interruption in schooling and the pandemic itself caused parents to be anxious and even to panic. Mobile-based parenting skills education has been demonstrated to be an effective method for improving the psychological

Background: Young people, aged 15-25 years, are at a critical stage of life when they need to navigate vocational pathways and achieve work and study outcomes. Those with mental health problems are particularly at risk of disengagement with work and study and need effective support. The headspace Work and Study (hWS) service is an innovative online platform implemented in Australia to support young

Background: Social distancing guidelines for COVID-19 have caused a rapid transition to telephone and video technologies for delivering treatment for substance use disorders (SUDs). Objective: This study examined the adoption of these technologies across the SUD service continuum, acceptance of these technologies among service providers, and intent of providers to use these technologies after the pandemic

Background: Loneliness is a growing area of concern, attracting attention as a public health concern due to its association with a variety of psychological and physical health problems. However, interventions targeting loneliness are less common than interventions for other mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety, and existing interventions focus primarily on building social skills and

Background: Missing cases present a challenge to our ability to evaluate the effects of web-based psychotherapy trials. As missing cases are often lost to follow-up, less is known about their characteristics, their likely clinical outcomes, or the likely effect of the treatment being trialed. Objective: The aim of this study is to explore the characteristics of missing cases, their likely treatment

Background: Patients can struggle to make good use of psychotherapy owing to deficits in awareness, and digital technologies that support awareness are at a premium. Currently, when patients participate in cognitive analytic therapy (CAT), the technology supporting relational awareness work involves completion of paper-based worksheets as between-session tasks. Objective: We aimed to design, with therapists

Background: The prevalence of mood, trauma, and stressor-related disorders is disproportionately higher among people living with HIV than among individuals without the virus. Poor adherence to HIV treatment and heightened psychological distress have been linked to symptoms associated with these disorders. Objective: The objective of this exploratory pilot study was to develop and implement an intervention

Digital therapeutics can overcome many of the barriers to translation of evidence-based treatment for substance use, mental health, and other behavioral health conditions. Delivered via nearly ubiquitous platforms such as the web, smartphone applications, text messaging, and videoconferencing, digital therapeutics can transcend the time and geographic boundaries of traditional clinical settings so

Background: Many individuals who self-injure seek support and information through online communities and mobile peer-support apps. Although researchers have identified risks and benefits of participation, empirical work linking participation in these web-based spaces to self-injury behaviors and thoughts is limited. Objective: This study aims to investigate the relationship between behavioral and linguistic

Background: Mobile health technology has demonstrated the ability of smartphone apps and sensors to collect data pertaining to patient activity, behavior, and cognition. It also offers the opportunity to understand how everyday passive mobile metrics such as battery life and screen time relate to mental health outcomes through continuous sensing. Impulsivity is an underlying factor in numerous physical

Background: A growing body of evidence is suggesting a significant association between the COVID-19 pandemic and population-level mental health. Study findings suggest that individuals with a lifetime history of disordered eating behavior may be negatively affected by COVID-19–related anxiety, and prevention measures may disrupt daily functioning and limit access to treatment. However, data describing

Background: There are several barriers that may hamper adolescent mothers’ utilization of available health interventions for perinatal depression. Innovative treatment approaches are needed to increase adolescent mothers’ access to mental health care for improved maternal and child health outcomes. Mobile phones have the potential to serve as important conduits to mental health care in Africa. However

The behavioral health toll of the COVID-19 pandemic and systemic racism has directed increased attention to the potential of digital health as a way of improving access to and quality of behavioral health care. However, as the pandemic continues to widen health disparities in racially and ethnically minoritized groups, concerns arise around an increased reliance on digital health technologies exacerbating

Background: The outbreak of COVID-19 has dominated headlines worldwide. The number of infections has continued to rise and had reached 30,000 worldwide at the time this paper was written. Because of the high risk of nosocomial transmission, medical health care workers may be experiencing substantial psychological stress. This descriptive study aimed to identify psychosocial effects on hospital staff

Background: New technologies are changing access to medical records and the relationship between physicians and patients. Professionals can now use e-mental health tools to provide prompt and personalized responses to patients with mental illness. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the digital phenotypes of patients who use e-mental health apps. Objective: This study aimed to reveal the profiles

Background: We conducted a trial to test the electronic Illness Management and Recovery (e-IMR) intervention to provide conclusions on the potential efficacy of eHealth for people with severe mental illness (SMI). In the e-IMR intervention, we used the standard IMR program content and methodology and combined face-to-face sessions with internet-based strategies on the constructed e-IMR internet platform

Background: This study proposes a digital program for the treatment of mental illness that could increase motivation and improve learning outcomes for patients. Several studies have already applied this method by using an exposure and response prevention–inspired serious game to treat patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Objective: We hypothesized that a mobile cognitive behavior therapy

Background: Stigma, fear, and lack of knowledge regarding treatment options or where to get help create delays for Latina women in accessing needed mental health help. Story-based media interventions hold appeal for Latina women. Thus, we drew upon the Social Cognitive Theory by Bandura to create an evidence-based, transmedia storytelling web-based app for mental health called Catalina: Confronting

Background: Downloading a COVID-19 contact tracing app may be effective in reducing users’ worry about COVID-19 and psychological distress. Objective: This 2.5-month prospective study aimed to investigate the association of downloading a COVID-19 contact tracing app, the COVID-19 Contact Confirming Application (COCOA), released by the Japanese government, with worry about COVID-19 and psychological

Background: Smartphone-based symptom monitoring has gained increased attention in psychiatric research as a cost-efficient tool for prospective and ecologically valid assessments based on participants’ self-reports. However, a meaningful interpretation of smartphone-based assessments requires knowledge about their psychometric properties, especially their validity. Objective: The goal of this study

Background: University students are experiencing higher levels of distress and mental health disorders than before. In addressing mental health needs, web-based interventions have shown increasing promise in overcoming geographic distances and high student-to-counselor ratios, leading to the potential for wider implementation. The Mindfulness Virtual Community (MVC) program, a web-based program, guided

Background: The vast majority of adolescent mental health and substance use disorders go undiagnosed and undertreated. SMS text messaging is increasingly used as a method to deliver adolescent health services that promote psychological well-being and aim to protect adolescents from adverse experiences and risk factors critical for their current and future mental health. To date, there has been no comprehensive

Background: Schools increasingly prioritize social-emotional competence and bullying and cyberbullying prevention, so the development of novel, low-cost, and high-yield programs addressing these topics is important. Further, rigorous assessment of interventions prior to widespread dissemination is crucial. Objective: This study assesses the effectiveness and implementation fidelity of the ACT Out!

Background: Peer support is an approach to cope with mental illness, and technology provides a way to facilitate peer support. However, there are barriers to seeking support in offline and technology-mediated contexts. Objective: This study aims to uncover potential ways to design digital mental health peer support systems and to outline a set of principles for future designers to consider as they

The therapeutic alliance (TA), the relationship that develops between a therapist and a client/patient, is a critical factor in the outcome of psychological therapy. As mental health care is increasingly adopting digital technologies and offering therapeutic interventions that may not involve human therapists, the notion of a TA in digital mental health care requires exploration. To date, there has

Background: International research has emphasized that youths are at higher risk for the onset of internet addiction (IA), but studies investigating biological, psychological, and social factors associated with this condition are limited. Objective: This study aims to investigate the possible association between IA and genetic polymorphisms in monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A), serotonin-transporter (5-HTTPR)

Social distancing measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated the adoption and implementation of digital mental health tools. Psychiatry and therapy sessions are being conducted via videoconferencing platforms, and the use of digital mental health tools for monitoring and treatment has grown. This rapid shift to telehealth during the pandemic has given added urgency to the ethical challenges