Tag: Fortney

Reading of the Week: Telepsychiatry – the Reality, the Potential, the Problems

From the Editor

Just a handful of months ago, mental health work didn’t require a webcam or a lighting ring, and no one talked about Zoom fatigue. The world is different now, obviously. With COVID-19, telepsychiatry is very much part of our clinical work.

This week, we consider three papers focused on telepsychiatry and our new world.

How widespread is the adoption of telepsychiatry in this pandemic era? In the first selection, Jonathan Cantor (of the RAND Corporation) and his co-authors draw on a big American database to answer that question. In Psychiatric Services, they write: “During the COVID-19 pandemic, the percentage of outpatient mental health and substance use disorder treatment facilities offering telehealth has grown dramatically. However, our analyses also indicated that considerable proportions of mental health and substance use disorder treatment facilities still did not offer telehealth as of January 2021…”

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In the second selection, John C. Fortney (of the University of Washington) and his co-authors consider two different types of care: with psychiatrists directly involved in patient care (through televideo) or indirectly, by providing support to primary care. In a JAMA Psychiatry study, they do a comparison. Spoiler alert: both approaches were effective, suggesting great potential, especially for those in rural areas.

Of course, not everyone is enthusiastic about telepsychiatry. In our third selection, Dr. J. Alexander Scott (of the University of Michigan), a resident of psychiatry, describes his ambivalence. His Academic Psychiatry paper starts memorably: “Admittedly, I’ve never liked telemedicine.” He outlines some of the problems with our digital world.

DG

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Reading of the Week: The Future of Psychiatry – Part I of II

From the Editor

Should mental health clinicians embrace measurement-based care? Or is mental health becoming too technical (and forgetting patients as a result)?

The future?

When we speak about the future of mental health, we often think in terms of biomarkers and genetically-tailored drugs. And while they may be part of the distant future, can we improve clinical work in the near future?

Over the next two weeks, we will mull the future of psychiatry in terms of practice and measurement-based care. Measurement-based care has been defined simply by Scott and Lewis as “practice of basing clinical care on client data collected throughout treatment.”

This week, measurement-based care.

Next week, the end of the art of care?

While these two Readings were published in two different journals, they seek to address the future of the field, perhaps in somewhat contrasting ways.

This week, we look at a new paper published in the Psychiatric Services that offers a review of measurement-based care studies.

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