Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Nov 29, 2022
Open Peer Review Period: Nov 29, 2022 - Jan 24, 2023
Date Accepted: Apr 30, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
“It depends on the client”. Factors affecting mental health professionals’ digital tool usage in client interaction: A qualitative study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Digital tools and therapies are being increasingly developed in response to the growing mental health crisis, and mental health professionals (MHP) have considerable influence on their adoption. Yet, how MHPs use digital tools has remained insufficiently understood, which poses challenges to their design, development, and implementation.
Objective:
The study aims to create contextual understanding of how MHPs use different digital tools in clinical practice, and what characterizes the usage across tools.
Methods:
19 MHPs were thematically interviewed, and the data were transcribed, coded, and inductively analyzed.
Results:
We found that MHP digital tool usage was characterized by four distinct functions: communication, diagnosis and evaluation, facilitating therapeutic change, and managing client data. Our research focused on the first three categories and found that MHPs use solutions ranging from analogue, to digitized, and to digital. The MHP client communication has grown to include various digital mediums alongside face-to-face meetings; symptom questionnaires were digitizing; and MHPs actively used digital materials to facilitate therapeutic change. Across the digital tools, the usage was characterized by adaptability: the usage was negotiated in client interaction. There was, however, considerable variance in the breadth of MHPs’ digital toolbox. We describe how the existing treatment practices, that emphasize MHP-client interaction, are likely to invite incremental rather than radical developments which challenges achieving scalability benefits native to digital tools.
Conclusions:
MHPs use digital tools increasingly in client interaction. By describing how MHPs use, and do not use, digital tools in their practice, our results contribute to the user-centered research, development, and implementation of digital solutions in mental health care. Clinical Trial: Mental health professionals’ views and needs regarding game-based digital therapeutics https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/B8EG6
Citation
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Copyright
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