Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Mental Health
Date Submitted: Apr 19, 2020
Date Accepted: Jan 15, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Using text-based chat to deliver psychological therapeutic services: An e-mental health solution for rural and remote communities?
ABSTRACT
Background:
People living in rural and remote areas have poorer access to mental health services than those living in cities. They also are less likely to seek help because of self-stigma and entrenched stoic beliefs about help-seeking as a sign of weakness.
Objective:
E-mental health services have the potential to circumvent these barriers using technology.
Methods:
This review argues that text-based, real-time communication with a qualified therapist is an effective form of e-mental health service delivery that will be particularly attractive for those concerned with stigma and confidentiality.
Results:
Another advantage of text-based communications is that computational linguistic analyses of transcripts may help identify individuals at risk of serious mental health issues and suicide.
Conclusions:
We recommend that future research should pursue this potentially fruitful hypothesis to develop policy and improve intervention accessibility for regional communities.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.