Connected Mental Health: Systematic Mapping Study

Abstract

Background: Although mental health issues constitute an increasing global burden affecting a large number of people, the 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 aim of this systematic mapping study is to provide an overview and a structured understanding of CMH literature available in the Scopus database.

Methods: A total of 289 selected publications were analyzed based on 8 classification criteria: publication year, publication source, research type, contribution type, empirical type, mental health issues, targeted cohort groups, and countries where the empirically evaluated studies were conducted.

Results: The results showed that there was an increasing interest in CMH publications; journals were the main publication channels of the selected papers; exploratory research was the dominant research type; advantages and challenges of the use of technology for mental health care were the most investigated subjects; most of the selected studies had not been evaluated empirically; depression and anxiety were the most addressed mental disorders; young people were the most targeted cohort groups in the selected publications; and Australia, followed by the United States, was the country where most empirically evaluated studies were conducted.

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 overcome existing mental health care delivery barriers. Future research should be shifted toward providing evidence-based studies to examine the effectiveness of CMH solutions and identify related issues.

Keywords: connected health; eHealth; health informatics; information systems; information technology; interdisciplinary research; mHealth; mental health; mobile health; mobile phone; review; telehealth.