The Road to Digitally-Driven Mental Health Services

Abstract

Intervention in mental health urges new solutions that merge solid theoretical foundations and new possibilities provided by technological development. This chapter is structured around results from a data mining technique using VOSViewer, which organized the field into five clusters of published literature: (1) most affected populations, (2) mental illness/disorders and their impact, (3) the expansion of remote interventions, (4) ICT potential to overcome limitations and (5) a positive approach to ICTs in mental health care. Solutions and recommendations are presented to overcome the issues identified, including how future interventions should consider old and new issues as the ones raised by the COVID-19 pandemic. Computer-based or web-based interventions are hereby presented as part of the revolution towards digital mental health or e-mental health. This approach has the potential to deconfine interventions, releasing them from the traditional settings and reaching new populations. It also reinforces the path already started, from the secondary to the primary and primordial prevention, towards the modification of the psychopathological trajectories.