The role of digital technology in bridging the child mental health care gap

Excerpt

The field of child psychiatry has come a long way in the last decades. There is now a wide range of effective interventions available to treat child mental disorders, from pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy to complex psychosocial programs [1]. However, these interventions are probably not accessible for most of children with mental disorders worldwide [2]. The unmet need is known to be related to policy gaps (e.g., lack of specific policies for child mental health) and implementation gaps (e.g., insufficient number of mental health professionals). Epidemiological studies focused on describing unmet needs in children across the globe are crucial to understand the access gap and to provide information to plan health systems. Once there is a clear picture of the unmet needs, more resources are expected to be directed to the field, which is considerably under-funded [3]. More importantly, monitoring changes in rates of unmet needs over long periods of time can provide much-needed evidence on the effectiveness of strategies used to reduce the child mental health care gap. …