Monday, September 26, 2022

India's Mental Health: The Need to Improve Telepsychiatry's Prominence | Online Docs

The demand for telepsychiatry has outpaced the supply due to the global scarcity of skilled board-certified psychiatrists. According to research, Tele-psychiatry is an efficient, inexpensive, and accessible alternative to in-person consultations.

 

According to research published in "The Indian Journal of Psychiatry," PTSD is the most frequently diagnosed form of depression, affecting 30% of Indian doctors and medical professionals. Additionally, the epidemic has made all doctors more stressed, which has led to a rise in the prevalence of anxiety and depression. Dr. Lorna Breen's Health Care Provider Protection Act was enacted in the US on March 18, 2022. This measure establishes grants and mandates additional activities to promote mental and behavioral health for healthcare professionals. Due to such laws and provisions, there will now be greater demand for mental health specialists to care for patients and staff. Telepsychiatry can support hospitals, ERs, clinics, and other healthcare facilities, enhancing the standard of treatment for patients and medical staff.

 

Indian Mental Health Care

 

According to a recent analysis by Deloitte, India had 0.29 psychiatrists and 0.07 psychologists for every 10,000 people, compared to the median of 0.51 psychiatrists and 0.26 psychologists in other low and middle-income nations. Medical groups advise using telepsychiatry for cross-border consultations to address the global shortage of qualified psychiatrists and psychologists. We can handle the global lack of psychiatrists and psychologists using telepsychiatry. With the advent of a telepsychiatry platform, more businesses are moving toward hybrid healthcare that includes in-person sessions. Currently, many nations are attempting to transform mental health globally. Countries like the United States collaborate on a public-private strategy to address mental health.

 

The 2022 budget release in India included a discussion on mental health treatment. These coordinated efforts cover system regulation, patient's rights protection, mental health care funding, and research and innovation promotions. The Indian government has started a nationwide telemental health program. This program would significantly improve accessibility for patients in rural locations who need psychological assistance. It will raise knowledge about mental health and lessen the stigma for people seeking psychological services for the first time.

 

How The Epidemic Hastened The Healthcare Industry's Digital Revolution

 

Telemedicine has been a timely and much-needed tool over the last two years, according to doctors worldwide. However, only a small number of telemedicine systems have assisted doctors in lowering their stress levels regarding administrative tasks like producing invoices or prescriptions, etc. Finding and implementing distinctive telemedicine platforms that are patient and physician-centered, concentrating on clinical care and easing the administrative burden, is crucial. Due to the stigma surrounding mental health, we know that patient data is susceptible and confidential, making it vulnerable to hacking due to weak security measures for storage and access. Only a few telemedicine industries are using technology to ensure transparency and interconnectivity of telehealth services, making them more secure and reliable for mental health services. This is to address the problem and achieve better patient data protection. Block-chain-based telemedicine platforms will make it simpler to preserve patient data and eliminate the stigma associated with mental health.

 

Leveraging Digital Technology For Health Education

 

Telepsychiatry can transform many crucial fields using digital technology to increase capacity. The clinical skills necessary for the early identification and treatment of psychiatric diseases rarely translate from traditional training programs that include technical lectures, video demonstrations, PowerPoint presentations, and classroom settings. The benefits of Tele-psychiatry training experiences include a didactic curriculum and adaptability to adopt a pedagogical approach depending on the professional. It receives bottom-up training, the opportunity for service-based learning, and the freedom to attend training sessions whenever it is most convenient for the students. Additionally, technology–enhanced learning can assist students in participating in teleconference journal clubs, satellite broadcasts, and simulated telepsychiatry consultations.

We can introduce the idea of observership in psychiatry through telepsychiatry. Through online lessons, a learner can see how to evaluate. Diagnose, and track the development of a patient. Providing opportunities for additional exposure to challenging clinical circumstances and enhancing liaison opportunities can radically restructure postgraduate training. This could lead to the creation of experts with greater competence.

Technology can be used to educate and train not only medical students but also primary care doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists, and other paramedical staff due to the lack of human resources in the field of mental health care around the world, particularly in low-and middle-income (LAMI) countries. This will assist in increasing capacity, reaching unreached people, and providing care for underserved people.

 

Role Of Mental Health Applications In Telepsychiatry

 

Personalizing Telehealth is a crucial area where telepsychiatry has a lot of potentials. Smartphones are now widely used thanks to recent advancements in communications, and everyone can use them to offer patients individualized care. Applications for mobile devices designed specifically for treating mental illness can provide a multidisciplinary team with dynamic two-way communication. Patients can sign up for themselves in the application tailored to their diagnosis. This application may develop into a secure repository for all clinical information, including e-prescriptions, drug status, allergies, comorbid illnesses, and a checklist to track side effects and treatment adherence. With the help of this application, the professional might also be able to oversee and manage the patient from a distance, similar to running a virtual mental health clinic.

 

The Future Of Telepsychiatry Practice Will Be Advanced By Virtual Reality And Artificial Intelligence

 

Artificial intelligence's application in psychiatry includes using machine learning algorithms and automated language processing to evaluate a patient's mental state. Artificial intelligence is widespread and has anything from diagnosis and prediction to treating mental diseases. Applications are presently available that use artificial intelligence to track smartphone usage patterns and identify users who may be at risk of mental health issues. We can now use artificial intelligence-based algorithms to predict treatment outcomes and cognitive symptoms like psychosis, which might manifest as thinking abnormalities, behavioral disorganization, or catatonia. By adding machine learning algorithms to human clinical ratings, false negative and false positive diagnoses have also been reduced.

A human can interact with a computer-generated simulation known as virtual reality (VR) by adopting specialized gear. Numerous studies have demonstrated the value of virtual reality (VR) as an engagement and diversion tool for people with mental conditions such as PTSD, anxiety, particular phobias, schizophrenia, dementia, etc. Virtual Reality technology can improve in vitro therapy, especially when it's challenging to expose patients in vivo.

Additionally, VR can personalize the exposure to particular contexts and stimuli that may trigger the patient's most distressing symptoms in cases of PTSD and specific phobias. Soon, machine learning will assist patients in receiving psychiatric treatment using computerized conversational bots, boosting the possibility that they will receive customized treatment protocols by establishing links between symptoms, neurobiological conditions, and functioning across diagnoses. Artificial intelligence can even transform the way that mental disorders are classified. In the future, artificial intelligence might help the doctor diagnose a patient, working together with specific applications to analyze a variety of data, such as history, risk factors, side effects, current treatment guidelines, etc., and come up with the best possible treatment plan for any given patient, opening up the possibility of customized treatment. Additionally, artificial intelligence may assess and alert to medicine demand, account for available stocks, and automatically make an order for the drugs to be delivered to predetermined locations.

Along with medication, a doctor might also advise using a particular app for each disorder. These apps can be used for various things, including tracking patient symptoms, generating electronic prescriptions, providing psycho-educational tools, ensuring adherence, and alerting both parties involved to any warning signs. By doing this, it is guaranteed that prompt access to complete care is provided. An intriguing development in the science of artificial intelligence is chatbots. They can be crucial in detecting, diagnosing, and treating mental diseases because they are conversational agents. Additionally, they may also help manage and prevent suicide.

 

Online Counseling

 

Due to limited healthcare resources, online support groups have grown in popularity over the last few years. A Cochrane evaluation found even self-help programs for quitting smoking were inferior. These groups cater to individuals with depression, suicidal thoughts, substance misuse, cancer, and eating disorders. Social media's growing popularity has given online peer networks the chance to support mental health rehabilitation and minimize stigma. This becomes even more crucial for reaching the unreached low- and middle-income countries. These peer support groups are bringing about a paradigm shift by facilitating access to health information and assisting persons with mental illness. Expanding on these benefits and addressing whether peer-to-peer skills acquired via an online platform result in a sustained improvement in social and occupational performance in the actual world require future study. There are still methodological issues to be solved, particularly in assessing such therapies and getting unbiased outcome data.

 

Electronic Health Records

 

Because psychiatrists are required by the MHCA 2017 to maintain an essential medical record, these are crucial for patients with mental illness. Patients can access health information that is recorded (EHRs) and managed by a healthcare organization through electronic health records (EHR) portals, which are provider-tethered applications. Healthcare organizations are the owners and managers of these portals (such as hospitals). Through these portals, organizations give patients restricted web-based access to the clinical information contained in their patient health records. Then, patients can access, read, print, or incorporate this data into any patient–owned document (either electronic or paper-based).

 

Conclusion

 

Applications and artificial intelligence in information technology cannot solve all of these issues. Still, they are already improving assessment methods, developing new ways to collect data, expanding access to mental health services, and altering the very nature of service delivery. Clinical procedures will continue to change in the future, particularly with the emergence of virtual reality, synchronous and asynchronous video conferences, and other technologies that may help us reach the right audiences. Tele-psychiatry will change as technology, clinical uses, and care delivery paradigms advance. Tele- psychiatry incentives can help to advance this even further. By enhancing the ability to communicate with patients and their families, Tele-psychiatry will play a more integral part in healthcare transformation due to this evolution. The blending of national and international borders will give psychiatrists in India access to global opportunities. International consumers would receive real-time services from an Indian psychiatrist. This will start a new age of global regulation and oversight of virtual health tourism.

 

 Must Read : How can bad habits affect our mental health?


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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