Despite the potential of digital mental health interventions to aid recovery for people with serious mental illness, access to these digital tools remains a key barrier. In this column, the authors discuss three key assumptions that shape the integration of digital mental health tools into community health settings: clinical context, digital literacy, and financial burden. Clinical contexts have shifted with the increased use of telehealth, altering intervention environments; access to a mobile device is not the same as digital literacy; and digital mental health care is not necessarily affordable. Context-centered study design through ethnography will facilitate transfer of digital resources to real-world settings.
Keywords: Community mental health services; Digital health care; Qualitative methods; Quality improvement; Research design.