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Bringing digital mental health to where it is needed most

Nature Human Behaviour volume 1, pages 849–851 (2017)Cite this article

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Mental health technologies, such as apps, clinical texting, social media platforms and web-based tools, have arrived. Channelling these resources to help people with serious mental illnesses, clinicians in need of support, and people in low-and middle-income countries will have the most impact on the global burden of mental illness.

Across North America, Europe and Australia, academic institutions, healthcare systems and start-up companies are offering an array of technology for mental health, from wearable, sensor-enabled mood monitoring to avatar-delivered therapy to two-way texting or video platforms that can connect you to a therapist via your mobile device or tablet computer. Millions of national research dollars have been funnelled to support highly innovative mobile health (mHealth) and electronic health (eHealth) initiatives, and their study findings are regularly reported in top-tier peer-reviewed journals. As a research area and business revenue stream, the future of digital mental health seems bright. But whether these novel technologies will herald a true revolution, or simply produce an arsenal of treatment options and gadgetry that fail to address the most burning issues in mental healthcare, remains to be seen. We propose key areas that warrant heightened attention from healthcare, industry and research communities for digital mental health to actualize its full potential.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Behavioral Research in Technology and Engineering (BRiTE) Center, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA

    Dror Ben-Zeev & David C. Atkins

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  1. Dror Ben-Zeev
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  2. David C. Atkins
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Correspondence to Dror Ben-Zeev.

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Competing interests

D.B.-Z. has an intervention content licensing agreement and provides consultation to Pear Therapeutics. D.C.A. is a co-founder with equity stake in a technology company, Lyssn.io, LLC, focused on tools to support training, supervision and quality assurance of psychotherapy and counselling.

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Ben-Zeev, D., Atkins, D.C. Bringing digital mental health to where it is needed most. Nat Hum Behav 1, 849–851 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0232-0

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