Digital Platforms for Mental Health-care Delivery

Mental, neurological, and substance abuse disorders cause huge burden. The available resources to tackle the huge burden are insufficient, inequitably distributed, and inefficiently used, which results in a large majority of people with these disorders receiving no care at all. Advances in technology can be used to address the concerns. At present, technology is utilized in online psychological interventions and mobile apps in the United States of America and United Kingdom. In India, technological advances are utilized in telemental health, mobile apps, software aiding psychological assessment and retraining, training for mental health professionals, and information delivery to general public. Although this would be cost effective, digital divide, ethical and legal issues have to be addressed for better penetration of the health technologies to the persons in need.