Search results

This paper aims to evaluate service user (SU) and clinician acceptability of video care, including future preferences to inform mental health practice during COVID-19, and beyond.

Structured questionnaires were co-developed with SUs and clinicians. The SU online experience questionnaire was built into video consultations (VCs) via the Attend Anywhere platform, completed between July 2020 and March 2021. A Trust-wide clinician experience survey was conducted between July and October 2020. Chi-squared test was performed for any differences in clinician VC rating by mental health difficulties, with the content analysis used for free-text data.

Of 1,275 SUs completing the questionnaire following VC, most felt supported (93.4%), and their needs were met (90%). For future appointments, 51.8% of SUs preferred video, followed by face-to-face (33%), with COVID-related and practical reasons given. Of 249 clinicians, 161 (64.7%) had used VCs. Most felt the therapeutic relationship (76.4%) and privacy (78.7%) were maintained. Clinicians felt confident about clinical assessment and management using video. However, they were less confident in assessing psychotic symptoms and initiating psychotropic medications. There were no significant differences in clinician VC rating by mental health difficulties. For future, more SUs preferred using video, with a quarter providing practical reasons.

The study provides a real-world example of video care implementation. In addition to highlighting clinician needs, support at the wider system/policy level, with a focus on addressing inequalities, can inform mental health care beyond COVID-19.

In this study, the authors aimed to compare the effectiveness of low-intensity psychological interventions provided face-to-face (FTF) with those provided by telephone and video-based modalities, in a primary care psychology service for individuals with mild-to-moderate mental health difficulties.

Participants (N = 384) were service users who completed at least one intervention with the service over a two-year period between 2019 and 2021. Using psychometric measures of anxiety and low mood, a repeated measures design pre-, mid- and post-intervention evaluated service users’ clinical outcomes. Data analysis was carried out on those participants (N = 289) who had completed all three of the required psychometric measures.

All formats of intervention showed a significant and equivalent reduction in low mood and anxiety scores at the completion of the intervention, regardless of the format of therapy. This suggests no discernible difference in the effectiveness of the three formats of intervention in this service. In addition, no significant association was found between the format of intervention and service user dropout rates.

This study availed of data arising pre and during a pandemic as a naturalistic experiment into the use of telehealth in delivering brief psychological interventions in a frontline community service. The effectiveness of telephone and video-based brief psychological interventions was found to be comparable to that experienced by FTF interventions. This provides preliminary support for the inclusion of telehealth options for service users engaging with low-intensity psychotherapeutic services.

Digital healthcare once again emerges due to pandemic (Covid-19). Digital healthcare can be minimising the issue of accessibility, availability, accuracy and affordability of healthcare service during a pandemic. Digital healthcare playsa significant role to provide healthcare equity during the pandemic. This article presents the current trends and scenario of digital healthcare with a focus on health equity. The main objective of this chapter is to review the four aces of health equity in the digital healthcare literature. The scope and challenges faced by the policymakers to implementation of digital healthcare to improve health equity. This chapter considers the hybrid literature review based on the bibliometric and the systematic literature based on the various theme, sub-theme, concept and context-related health equity through digital healthcare. This study provides the previous and current research trends and preposition for the future researcher, healthcare professional, policymakers and digital healthcare innovators to invent the tool which leads the health equity through the digital healthcare in the healthcare.

The adoption of telephone-delivered mental health services (TDMHS) for scaling collaborative care or addressing access to mental health services in routine primary care practice is gradual despite the needs of the population. Although there are multi-level factors associated with efficient implementation of collaborative care, there is limited understanding of clinicians’ perceptions, experiences and acceptability providing mental health treatment exclusively over the telephone. The purpose of this paper is to explore behavioral health clinicians’ delivery of mental health services over the telephone within primary care settings.

This qualitative study explored behavioral health professionals’ perceptions and experiences providing remote, TDMHS. Convenience sampling was used to recruit 11 clinicians in New York, California and Arizona who provided collaborative care services to patients exclusively over the telephone. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and analyzed using qualitative content analysis methods.

Three main themes and associated subthemes emerged from the analyses. The first theme was participants’ perceptions of TDMHS prior to implementation relating to patient characteristics, patient engagement and comparison to in-person therapy. The second main theme identified was participants’ experiences implementing TDMHS with subthemes relating to benefits, quality of care, gaps in care and concerns implementing TDMHS. The final theme that emerged from the analysis was participants’ perceived acceptability of TDMHS by patients.

The small sample size limits the generalizability of these findings.

Mental health services delivered over the telephone are perceived as feasible and acceptable by behavioral health clinicians.

This study contributes to gaps in research about behavioral health clinicians’ beliefs, uptake and acceptability toward mental health services delivered exclusively over the telephone.

This study aims to analyze the way Indonesian and the US laws regulate the reality and implications of legal issues regarding telemedicine, including the protection of citizens in using telemedicine.

This normative legal study used secondary data comprising primary and secondary legal materials based on the law as a norm. The normative legal method was used because the data were based on laws and regulations, reports, journals and research governing telemedicine in Indonesia and the USA.

The results showed similarities between Indonesia and the USA regarding health services as part of protecting human rights. The differences in implementing telemedicine are from a legal aspect. The legal comparison of telemedicine implementation between the two countries resulted in differences in regulation, informed consent, medical records, practice licenses and medical prescriptions.

This study discussed telemedicine’s legal aspects in Indonesia and the USA.

This study aimed to determine the implementation and guidelines used by the USA to be considered for adoption by Indonesia for legal certainty.

The results showed that legal threats could be a weakness of law in Indonesia. Therefore, the government should develop guidelines about telemedicine to accommodate citizens’ legal protection and certainty.

This study is original and could be used as a reference for policymakers in Indonesia and the USA in protecting citizens using telemedicine services. The findings provide a perspective based on Health Law in Indonesia.

The purpose of this paper is to report findings from a service evaluation undertaken within a single specialist child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) team. The team works closely with local authority children’s services to serve specific populations recognised as experiencing higher levels of mental health need, including children living in alternative care and with adoptive families. The evaluation sought to better understand the experience of this provision during the COVID-19 pandemic and concomitant increase in remote and digitally mediated care delivery.

Analysis of the accounts of 38 parents, carers and professionals involved with the team gathered via telephone interviews and email and postal questionnaires.

Similar views were expressed from participants involved with the team before and following the onset of the pandemic. Overall, satisfaction was high; however, changes in care appeared more challenging for those already involved with the team before the pandemic. Differences in experience between groups were also evident. Whereas foster carers’ accounts were generally appreciative of the involvement of clinicians, particularly regarding clinician–patient relationships, amongst adoptive parents and members of children’s birth families there were more mixed and negative impressions.

Locally based service evaluations can help inform care pathway planning in specialist CAMHS provision as part of wider quality improvement initiatives. This is especially relevant considering the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic and as the longer-term acceptability of remote working practices is appraised.

This chapter depicts the burden of suicidal behavior among African American males. It describes the public health approach to preventing suicidal behavior among African American males. This approach includes assessing and describing the problem; identifying causes or risk and protective factors; developing and evaluating programs and policies; and implementing and disseminating findings and activities. The chapter provides a review of the epidemiology of fatal and non-fatal suicidal behavior; a summary of what is known about the risk and protective factors of the problem; and a descriptive analysis of the circumstances associated with suicides among young African American males is presented. Lastly, the authors give a summary of evidenced-based prevention programs which could be applied in preventing male suicidal behavior.

The purpose of this study is to provide current state of knowledge on how the COVID-19 emergency situation necessitated the behaviour influencing use and acceptance of telehealth. This study interlinks the health belief model (HBM) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to highlight the challenges and opportunities as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in the public health sector.

This study used three online databases (Emerald publishing, Science Direct and Taylor and Francis) that enabled the authors to access electronic journal articles. Search strategy was used to extract articles based on the relevance of this study.

The key findings from this study suggested that the COVID-19 emergency forced health-care workers and their patients to rapidly use and rely on telehealth to reduce the rate of COVID-19 transmissions. The key benefits of telehealth use highlighted an expansive cost effective and convenient access to health-care services irrespective of geographical local and levels of physical impairment. Moreover, telehealth inhibited in person human interaction, which was perceived as impersonal and not ideal for new patient consultations. The barriers outweighed the benefits; as a result, it is unlikely that there will be a wide use of telehealth beyond the COVID-19 emergency situation.

The research findings are limited to discussions drawn from available secondary data. The criteria within telehealth for policymakers to note the technology acceptance and use for both health-care and outpatient stakeholders and their health seeking behaviour. Health-care sectors (private and public) and government need to understand enablers of effective telehealth in policymaking to ease the barriers during an emergency situation like a pandemic.

This study contributes to the emerging literature on how COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted and accelerated telehealth by extending both the UTAUT and HBM theories. This study is expected to contribute and expand literature on telehealth during emergency situations, given the novice nature of COVID-19 and limited literature surrounding it.

Background: This paper examines the impact of coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak on employees’ mental health, specifically psychological distress and depression. It aims at identifying the main stressors during and post COVID-19, examining the main moderating factors which may mitigate or aggravate the impact of COVID-19 on employees’ mental health and finally to suggest recommendations from a human resource management perspective to mitigate COVID-19’s impact on employees’ mental health.

Methods: This paper is a literature review. The search for articles was made in Google scholar, Web of Science and Semantic scholar. We used a combination of terms related to coronavirus OR COVID-19, workplace and mental health. Due to the paucity of studies on the COVID-19 impact on employees’ mental health, we had to draw on studies on recent epidemics.

Results: The identified literature reports a negative impact of COVID-19 on individual’s mental health. Stressors include perception of safety, threat and risk of contagion, infobesity versus the unknown, quarantine and confinement, stigma and social exclusion as well as financial loss and job insecurity. Furthermore, three dimensions of moderating factors have been identified: organizational, institutional and individual factors. In addition, a list of recommendations has been presented to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the employee’s mental health, during and after the outbreak, from a human resource management perspective.

Conclusions: Coronavirus is new and is in a rapid progress while writing this paper. Most of current research are biomedical focusing on individuals’ physical health. In this context, mental health issues seem overlooked. This paper helps to broaden the scope of research on workplace mental health, by examining the impact of a complex new pandemic: COVID-19 on employees’ mental health, from social sciences perceptive, mobilizing psychology and human resource management.

This paper aims to examine the global pattern of growth and development of eHealth research based on publication headcount, and analysis of the characteristics, of the keywords used by authors and indexers to represent their research content during 1945–2019.

This study adopted a bibliometric research design and a quantitative approach. The source of the data was Elsevier’s Scopus database. The search query involved multiple search terms because researchers’ choice of keywords varies very significantly. The search for eHealth research publications was limited to conference papers and research articles published before 2020.

eHealth originated in the late 1990s, but it has become an envelope term for describing much older terms such as telemedicine, and its variants that originated much earlier. The keywords were spread through the 27 Scopus Subject Areas, with medicine (44.04%), engineering (12.84%) and computer science (11.47%) leading, while by Scopus All Science Journal Classification Health Sciences accounted for 55.83% of the keywords. Physical sciences followed with 30.62%. The classifications social sciences and life sciences made only single-digit contributions. eHealth is about meeting health needs, but the work of engineers and computer scientists is very outstanding in achieving this goal.

This study demonstrates that eHealth is an unexplored aspect of health literature and highlights the nature of the accumulated literature in the area. It further demonstrates that eHealth is a multidisciplinary area that is attractive to researchers from all disciplines because of its sensitive focus on health, and therefore requires pooling and integration of human resources and expertise, methods and approaches.