The publication “Online therapy: an added value for inpatient routine care? Perspectives from mental health care professionals” has been accepted by Springer Nature. This study aimed to investigate the attitude of mental health care professionals working in inpatient care regarding internet-delivered interventions, including presumed benefits, barriers and facilitators.
176 health professionals from ten inpatient psychiatric hospitals throughout Germany were surveyed on site.
The main conclusions of this study are as follows:
“The most frequently mentioned potential benefits were an optimised treatment structure and patient empowerment; the most frequently anticipated barriers were too severe symptoms of patients, the feared neglect of face-to-face contacts and insufficient technical equipment; and the most frequently mentioned facilitators were high usability of the internet-based intervention, a sufficient functional level of the patient and further education of staff. For successful implementation in the inpatient sector, internet-delivered interventions must be adapted to the special needs of severely mentally ill patients and to the hospital management systems and workflow. In addition, technical preconditions (internet access, devices) must be met. Last, further education of mental health care professionals is needed.”
This publication has the following co-authors: Julia Sander, Felix Bolinski, Sandra Diekmann, Wolfgang Gaebel, Kristina Günther, Iris Hauth1, Andreas Heinz, Annet Kleiboer, Heleen Riper, Nadine Trost, Oyono Vlijter, Jürgen Zielasek, Gabriel Gerlinger.
You can read the full article here.