Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: May 7, 2020
Date Accepted: Jul 28, 2020
Connected Mental Health: A Systematic Mapping Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Although mental health issues constitute an increasing global burden affecting large numbers of people, mental health care industry is still facing several care delivery barriers, such as stigma, education, and cost. Connected mental health (CMH), which refers to the use of information and communication technologies in mental health care, can assist in overcoming these barriers.
Objective:
The objective of this systematic mapping study is to provide an overview and a structured understanding of CMH literature available in Scopus database.
Methods:
A total of 289 selected publications were analyzed based on seven classification criteria: publication year, publication source, research type, contribution type, empirical type, mental health issues, and targeted cohort groups.
Results:
Results showed that there is an increasing interest in CMH publications; journals are the main publication channel of the selected papers; exploratory research is the dominant research type; advantages and challenges of the use of technology for mental health care were the most investigated subjects; the majority of the selected studies had not been evaluated empirically; depression and anxiety were the most addressed mental disorders; and young people were the most targeted cohort groups in the selected publications.
Conclusions:
CMH is a promising research field to present novel approaches to assist in the management, treatment, and diagnosis of mental health issues that can help overcoming existing mental health care delivery barriers. Future research should be shifted towards providing evidence-based studies, to examine the effectiveness of CMH solutions and identify related issues.
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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.