Technology and the Mental Healthcare Delivery System

Following the American Psychological Association’s Guidelines

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Technology and the Mental Healthcare Delivery System

Overview of Technology in Mental Healthcare Delivery

Covid-19 Pandemic has been unprecedently disastrous in every sector, including delivery of Mental healthcare (CMHA, n.d.). In order to gain insights into the mental health service delivery, the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) collected data from the clients seeking mental health, community, and the healthcare personnel. Although, there has been a transformation of mental health service delivery system by it going virtual way to combat the emerging needs of the clients, the risks posed by the increasing virtual consults also should not be overlooked. This paper is a Reflective paper, analyzing the impact of Covid – 19 on the healthcare workers, clients and communities at large (CMHA, n.d.).

Benefits and Challenges of Virtual Mental Healthcare

The study by CMHA indicates a welcoming response from the patients seeking mental health advice during COVID – 19 from the healthcare facilitators owing to their being at a vulnerable position of acquiring mental disorders. It also ensured patients with optimal healthcare delivery services. However, considering the risks posed by the healthcare workers like burgeoning psychological pressure (Vizheh et al., 2020), going for complete virtual transformation may not be the right choice. Although the advantages of online mental health consults are many, for instance, reduced healthcare costs, absolutely no travel time, the quality of healthcare delivery is however compromised as compared to the face-to-face medical consults (Hjelm, 2005). It also means increased patient-workload on healthcare personnel that may lead to decreased efficiency, burnout and fatigue. Some other disadvantages of going completely technology-way could be breakdown in the relationship between patient and healthcare personnel as well as between healthcare professionals, compromising issues on the quality of health information and organizational difficulties (Hjelm, 2005). In order for the technology to be more transparent, higher costs would be required to ensure data safety and efforts would be required to improve quality of telemedicine and online consultations in the coming future. 

Conclusion

Technology is a boon in the healthcare delivery system. However, there are many lacunae that need to be filled through appropriate research and actions to maximally benefit people with the desired outcomes.

References

CMHA (n.d.) COVID-19 pandemic at CMHA SCB; our clients experience. Canadian Medical 

Health Association

Hjelm (2005) Benefits and drawbacks of telemedicine. Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare.

DOI:10.1258/1357633053499886. Available at 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7908107_Benefits_and_drawbacks_of_telemedicine

Vizheh, M. et al. (2020) The mental health of healthcare workers in the COVID-19 pandemic: A 

systematic review. J Diabetes Metab Disord. doi: 10.1007/s40200-020-00643-9. 

Available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7586202/