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Mental health for digital natives in the covid era: Shouldn’t remote counselling be the first line of engagement & treatment?

July 28, 2020 by SharpBrains

The ben­e­fits of remote con­sul­ta­tion for men­tal health treat­ment (Health Europa):

Thor­b­jorg Vig­fus­dót­tir, a cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gist by train­ing, spent 12 years as a politi­cian in her native Ice­land with the goal of direct­ing her knowl­edge on the devel­op­ment of the brain into edu­ca­tion and pub­lic pol­i­cy. After leav­ing pol­i­tics to form a com­pa­ny pro­vid­ing remote speech ther­a­py in Ice­landic schools, she was found­ed Kara Con­nect, an online con­sul­ta­tion plat­form enabling ther­a­pists and clin­i­cians to pro­vide remote care and treat­ment, which was recent­ly adopt­ed by the Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal of Ice­land (Land­spí­tali).

What are the key ben­e­fits of remote treat­ment for young peo­ple in need of men­tal health support?

Young peo­ple now are dig­i­tal natives: they find it use­less to go into a phys­i­cal wait­ing room and wait to see some­body that they don’t know; they pre­fer to do it this way. The thresh­old for get­ting help is eas­i­er when tech­nol­o­gy is involved; and many young peo­ple feel a degree of stig­ma about access­ing men­tal health sup­port, so it can help to con­nect online at least in the first instance, before you meet. It helps to build trust between the patient and ther­a­pist, for exam­ple if some­body is iso­lat­ed or bul­lied, of if they need to build trust with child pro­tec­tion ser­vices, the tech­nol­o­gy grants them eas­i­er access. It also elim­i­nates the issue of trans­port: they don’t need to pay for the bus or spend time in a wait­ing room filled with old­er peo­ple; it’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent access point for these young people.

Has the unprece­dent­ed onset of a glob­al pan­dem­ic sig­nif­i­cant­ly affect­ed the men­tal health of young peo­ple? Are you see­ing a high­er uptake in men­tal health services?

Yes, we are. There has been a doc­u­ment­ed increase in stu­dents at school and uni­ver­si­ty report­ing anx­i­ety and depres­sion. Many school psy­chol­o­gists and coun­sel­lors are adopt­ing remote con­sul­ta­tion tech­nolo­gies to reach these kids, to keep them going to school, and to allow them to talk to some­one about how they’re feel­ing. I think it’s real­ly impor­tant that schools, which may not be open­ing in autumn, again, keep in close touch with these kids: the men­tal health of young peo­ple is effec­tive­ly anoth­er pan­dem­ic right now; and the increase will act as a strain on the sys­tem as a whole, because we don’t have enough men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als. It may be that, using tele­health tech­nolo­gies, we can enable ther­a­pists to offer short­er ses­sions more often; and to use more of their time of these pro­fes­sion­als on con­duct­ing ses­sions than on administration…

News in Context:

  • Thor­b­jorg Hel­ga Vig­fus­dot­tir- People’s Choice at Nordic Start­up Awards 2018
  • Start­up Big Health rais­es $39M to uni­ver­sal­ize access to cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) for anx­i­ety and poor sleep
  •  Microsoft announces sup­port for three inno­v­a­tive men­tal health ser­vices har­ness­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI)
  • Three ways to pro­tect your men­tal health dur­ing –and after– COVID-19
  • Debate the Future of Men­tal Health in North Amer­i­ca: In ten years, will we see DSM‑6 or Some­thing Much Bet­ter (SMB‑1)?
  • Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright

Rethink­ing and Retool­ing Brain Health and Men­tal Health from Sharp­Brains

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: anxiety, cognitive psychologist, depression, digital natives, Kara Connect, mental health, pandemic, remote consultation, therapists, Thorbjorg Vigfusdóttir

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