Telepsychiatry and Health Technologies

Telepsychiatry and Health Technologies: A Guide for Mental Health Professionals is a practical guide for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals seeking to exploit the enormous potential of today’s innovative digital technologies to improve the quality, accessibility, and cost-effectiveness of care for patients with psychiatric disorders. Taking the doctor–patient relationship as its consistent focus, the book explores currently available mental health care delivery technologies—from telephony, smartphones, and apps to e-mail, secure texting, and videoconferencing—and offers practical advice to clinicians on how best to make use of these tools to provide high-quality care to their patients. Beginning with an overview of current psychiatric practice, the authors cover the broader context of telepsychiatry, including its history and evidence base; give specific guidance on setting up and managing a telepsychiatry practice; and discuss in-person, online, and hybrid models of care, as well as data collection, electronic records, clinical documentation, and ethics. Foremost a clinical manual, Telepsychiatry and Health Technologies: A Guide for Mental Health Professionals argues that the sensible use of health care technologies will reduce the current gap between mental health care supply and demand, improve models of care delivery, and ultimately lead to better health for more patients than traditional systems of care can provide.