Introducing ‘Digital mental healthcare in Canada: A blog series’
By Ava Homiar & Adrienne Davidson
A major focus of the Public Engagement in Health Policy project is to look forward - to identify novel approaches for engaging people in designing and establishing new health care strategies that are suitable across diverse populations. New developments in digital mental healthcare offer the opportunity to enhance the accessibility to mental health services for a broader range of populations, and to ensure citizen involvement in the design and implementation of these solutions.
This series explores the provision and use of digital mental health services in recent years in Canada, and specifically during the pandemic. The beginning of 2020 marked an increase in digital mental healthcare delivery, as well as its use within diverse user groups. The transformation from fully in-person care to the adoption of virtual platforms has provided patients, practitioners, and other stakeholders with the opportunity to identify key strengths and weaknesses within the digital sphere of healthcare, and work towards improving these digital tools for individuals to use within the practice of mental healthcare. Leveraging insights from public perspectives and attitudes, we aim to identify the current sphere of digital mental healthcare in Canada, and examine the critical strengths and weaknesses within digital mental health service provision. Our compiled recommendations can help serve as guidelines and points of discussion for further development and research on improving digital mental health services in Canada.
Blog 1 - Digital Mental Healthcare in Canada: Progress and Considerations
The level of need for mental health services in the Canadian population increased significantly during the pandemic, with digital mental health tools being widely promoted and used to enhance the accessibility to mental health services across diverse populations. In this blog post, we briefly review the digital mental health (DMH) services and e-mental health tools that have been utilized since the beginning of the pandemic and explore public attitudes toward the shift to virtual mental healthcare and the quality of care patients receive. These services are used by a variety of populations, with varying levels of satisfaction. Satisfaction with services is largely influenced by individuals’ ability to access these tools, which highlights the importance of addressing accessibility issues in the further development of these tools.
Blog 2 - coming soon
While DMH tools are able to address barriers that some populations experience - such as overall accessibility and an increase in tailored resources - limitations that they may face with in-person care, DMH tools may also propagate existing inequities in mental health care for under-resourced populations. Many challenges to delivering equitable digital mental health care through virtual services remain for rural, Indigenous, elderly, and homeless populations. Clinicians and clients may experience general inaccessibility and even unawareness of the available DMH tools, which may prevent effective care that aligns with the needs of the local populations and communities.
Blog 3 - coming soon
In response to the challenges facing the use of DMH tools in mental healthcare, there have been various recommendations by organizations and researchers that will result in providing better access to these services, and ameliorate the barriers of DMH technologies for its users and providers. We have created a simple framework using the common principles that various works have identified. In the future, organizations and municipal/provincial/federal governments can consider this framework in order to effectively provide digital mental health tools to individuals.
Ava Homiar is a BSc student in the Honours Life Science Co-Op program at McMaster University and a 2022 research fellow with the Public Engagement in Health Policy Project. Her research interests include developing people-centred AI and digital technology-enabled solutions for the monitoring and treatment of symptoms in individuals living with mental illness. She is also interested in assessing patients’ ability and motivation to engage in digital healthcare/research. Ava works at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto where she is involved in assessing the clinical utility of artificial intelligence and technology in the digital mental health field.
Adrienne Davidson is an Assistant Professor of Political Science, specializing in comparative public policy and Canadian politics. Her work focuses on the political dynamics of federal systems, investigating the conditions that favour periods of significant policy change. Her research also explores the relationship between political institutions and group identity, including the ways in which institutions shape, reinforce, or undermine minority nations (including Indigenous nations) in federal systems. Her work has spanned questions of regionalism, Indigenous politics, environmental policy and child care policy.
This essay was prepared by members of the Public Engagement in Health Policy team, which is supported by the Future of Canada Project at McMaster University. Please visit www.engagementinhealthpolicy.ca for further research outputs and resources.