The Journal of Practical Medicine ›› 2024, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (18): 2513-2519.doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1006-5725.2024.18.001

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Development of digital therapy in the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders

Zheng ZHANG1,Zhengqian JIANG1,Jiali LIU1,Xia CAO2,Jiansong. ZHOU1()   

  1. Department of Psychiatry,the Second Xiangya Hospital,Central South University,National Clinical Research Centre for Psychiatric and Mental Diseases,National Medical Centre for Mental Diseases,Changsha 410000,China
  • Received:2024-01-08 Online:2024-09-25 Published:2024-09-30
  • Contact: Jiansong. ZHOU E-mail:zhoujs2003@csu.edu.cn

Abstract:

Digital therapy shows promise in providing precise assessments and enhancing the efficacy of treatments for mental illness, offering advantages such as convenience, flexibility, and the potential to reduce costs by shifting towards preventive care. This article reviews the development and benefits of digital therapy in mental health care and discusses the challenges it faces, including concerns over privacy, ethics, security, accessibility issues, digital divides, and the lack of sufficient clinical validation and standardization. It also highlights specific risks to mental health patients and explores potential future developments such as integration with brain-computer interfaces and neurofeedback, the use of robot therapists based on large language models, applications of virtual reality or the metaverse, and combinations with traditional physical treatments and medications. The author calls for urgent policy recommendations to refine regulations, establish unified evidence standards, enhance training and education for healthcare providers and patients, and to build multidisciplinary collaborative mechanisms to advance personalized and effective digital therapy in mental health.

Key words: digital therapy, mental illness, interdisciplinary cooperation

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