Mental Health in a Digital World

Mental Health in a Digital World addresses mental health assessments and interventions using digital technology, including mobile phones, wearable devices and related technologies. Sections discuss mental health data collection and analysis for purposes of assessment and treatment, including the use of electronic medical records and information technologies to improve services and research, the use of digital technologies to enhance communication, psychoeducation, screening for mental disorders, the problematic use of the internet, including internet gambling and gaming, cybersex and cyberchondria, and internet interventions, ranging from online psychotherapy to mobile phone apps and virtual reality adjuncts to psychotherapy.

• Reviews research and applications of digital technology to mental health
• Includes digital technologies for assessment, intervention, communication and education
• Addresses data collection and analysis, service delivery and the therapeutic relationship
• Discusses the E-related disorders that complicate digital intervention

Table of Contents

1 I Introduction

Section A: Digital Data Collection and Analysis

2 Information technology and electronic health record to improve behavioral health services

3 Big data and the goal of personalized health interventions

4 Collecting data from Internet (and other platform) users for mental health research

5 Ecological momentary assessment and other digital technologies for capturing daily life in mental health

6 Social media big data analysis for mental health research

Section B: Communication, psychoeducation, screening

7 Telepsychiatry and video-to-home (including security issues)

8 Social Media and Clinical Practice

9 Websites and the validity of mental health care information

10 Digital phenotyping

11 The digital therapeutic relationship: Retaining humanity in the digital age

Section C: Problematic use of the Internet

12 Gambling disorder, gaming disorder, cybershopping, and other addictive/impulsive disorders online

13 Cyberchondria, cyberhoarding, and other compulsive online disorders

14 Internet-use disorders: A theoretical framework for their conceptualization and diagnosis

15 Cybersex (including sex robots)

16 Developmental aspects (including cyberbullying)

Section D: Interventions

17 Internet-based psychotherapies

18 Apps for mental health

19 Clinical interventions for technology-based problems

20 Scaling up of mental health services in the digital age: The rise of technology and its application to low- and middle-income countries

21 Addiction, autonomy, and the Internet: Some ethical considerations

About the Authors

Professor Dan J. Stein is Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Dr. Stein’s research areas include anxiety, trauma-, and stressor-related disorders. His work ranges from basic neuroscience, through clinical investigations and trials, and on to epidemiological and cross-cultural studies.

Naomi Fineberg is Professor of Psychiatry at University of Hertfordshire and has a specific interest in obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, as well as in the use of computer administered batteries to investigate compulsivity and impulsivity.

Samuel Chamberlain is a Welcome Trust Clinical Fellow and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at Cambridge University. He has a particular interest in impulsivity, and its manifestations in problematic internet use