Qualitative insights into mental health treatment through telemedicine during the COVID-19 crisis: a natural experiment in community mental health centers.

IF 3 Q1 CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY Health and Justice Pub Date : 2024-07-20 DOI:10.1186/s40352-024-00282-9
Brittany J Hood
{"title":"Qualitative insights into mental health treatment through telemedicine during the COVID-19 crisis: a natural experiment in community mental health centers.","authors":"Brittany J Hood","doi":"10.1186/s40352-024-00282-9","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing mental health challenges and introduced new ones, particularly among vulnerable populations such as individuals within the criminal justice system, who disproportionately experienced employment, financial, and housing issues. As mandatory lockdowns and social distancing mandates were implemented, the United States saw unprecedented interruptions to treatment. Telemedicine emerged as a transformative tool in alleviating new and existing treatment barriers. Yet, limited empirical research has examined the impact and implications of telemedicine on mental health treatment in criminal justice populations.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The timing of this study's data collection overlapped with the spread of COVID-19 in the United States and provided a unique opportunity to examine the impact of telemedicine as part of a natural experiment. Utilizing interviews with 61 community mental health center service providers, this study qualitatively examined service providers' experiences in treating criminal justice-involved individuals with serious mental illness who were receiving mental health treatment through telemedicine.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Service providers expressed satisfaction with telemedicine in addressing client transportation and childcare barriers while increasing engagement. Service providers voiced new concerns regarding clients' confidentiality, digital literacy, and limitations to gathering non-verbal client information during virtual treatment.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Mental health treatment offered through telemedicine mitigates barriers to treatment that disproportionately affect criminal justice clients. Despite its benefits, challenges like access to reliable internet and to internet-enabled devices, confidentiality concerns, and information gathering must be addressed to achieve optimal and equitable mental health treatment through telemedicine. The findings support the continued use of telemedicine in mental health treatment delivery for this population.</p>","PeriodicalId":37843,"journal":{"name":"Health and Justice","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11264870/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Health and Justice","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s40352-024-00282-9","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing mental health challenges and introduced new ones, particularly among vulnerable populations such as individuals within the criminal justice system, who disproportionately experienced employment, financial, and housing issues. As mandatory lockdowns and social distancing mandates were implemented, the United States saw unprecedented interruptions to treatment. Telemedicine emerged as a transformative tool in alleviating new and existing treatment barriers. Yet, limited empirical research has examined the impact and implications of telemedicine on mental health treatment in criminal justice populations.

Methods: The timing of this study's data collection overlapped with the spread of COVID-19 in the United States and provided a unique opportunity to examine the impact of telemedicine as part of a natural experiment. Utilizing interviews with 61 community mental health center service providers, this study qualitatively examined service providers' experiences in treating criminal justice-involved individuals with serious mental illness who were receiving mental health treatment through telemedicine.

Results: Service providers expressed satisfaction with telemedicine in addressing client transportation and childcare barriers while increasing engagement. Service providers voiced new concerns regarding clients' confidentiality, digital literacy, and limitations to gathering non-verbal client information during virtual treatment.

Conclusions: Mental health treatment offered through telemedicine mitigates barriers to treatment that disproportionately affect criminal justice clients. Despite its benefits, challenges like access to reliable internet and to internet-enabled devices, confidentiality concerns, and information gathering must be addressed to achieve optimal and equitable mental health treatment through telemedicine. The findings support the continued use of telemedicine in mental health treatment delivery for this population.

查看原文
分享 分享
微信好友 朋友圈 QQ好友 复制链接
本刊更多论文
在 COVID-19 危机期间通过远程医疗进行心理健康治疗的定性分析:社区心理健康中心的自然实验。
背景:COVID-19 大流行加剧了现有的心理健康挑战,并带来了新的挑战,尤其是在弱势群体中,如刑事司法系统中的个人,他们经历的就业、财务和住房问题尤为严重。随着强制封锁和社会疏远任务的实施,美国出现了前所未有的治疗中断。远程医疗成为缓解新的和现有治疗障碍的变革性工具。然而,有关远程医疗对刑事司法人群心理健康治疗的影响和意义的实证研究却十分有限:本研究的数据收集时间与 COVID-19 在美国的传播时间重合,这为研究远程医疗作为自然实验的一部分所产生的影响提供了一个独特的机会。通过对 61 名社区心理健康中心的服务提供者进行访谈,本研究对服务提供者在治疗通过远程医疗接受心理健康治疗的涉及刑事司法的严重精神疾病患者方面的经验进行了定性研究:结果:服务提供者对远程医疗在解决客户交通和儿童保育障碍、提高参与度方面的作用表示满意。服务提供者对客户的保密性、数字素养以及在虚拟治疗过程中收集客户非语言信息的局限性提出了新的担忧:结论:通过远程医疗提供的心理健康治疗可减轻治疗障碍,而这些障碍对刑事司法客户的影响尤为严重。尽管远程医疗好处多多,但要想通过远程医疗实现最佳、公平的心理健康治疗,还必须应对各种挑战,如使用可靠的互联网和互联网设备、保密问题和信息收集等。研究结果支持在为这类人群提供心理健康治疗时继续使用远程医疗。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 去求助
来源期刊
Health and Justice
Health and Justice Social Sciences-Law
CiteScore
4.10
自引率
8.60%
发文量
34
审稿时长
13 weeks
期刊介绍: Health & Justice is open to submissions from public health, criminology and criminal justice, medical science, psychology and clinical sciences, sociology, neuroscience, biology, anthropology and the social sciences, and covers a broad array of research types. It publishes original research, research notes (promising issues that are smaller in scope), commentaries, and translational notes (possible ways of introducing innovations in the justice system). Health & Justice aims to: Present original experimental research on the area of health and well-being of people involved in the adult or juvenile justice system, including people who work in the system; Present meta-analysis or systematic reviews in the area of health and justice for those involved in the justice system; Provide an arena to present new and upcoming scientific issues; Present translational science—the movement of scientific findings into practice including programs, procedures, or strategies; Present implementation science findings to advance the uptake and use of evidence-based practices; and, Present protocols and clinical practice guidelines. As an open access journal, Health & Justice aims for a broad reach, including researchers across many disciplines as well as justice practitioners (e.g. judges, prosecutors, defenders, probation officers, treatment providers, mental health and medical personnel working with justice-involved individuals, etc.). The sections of the journal devoted to translational and implementation sciences are primarily geared to practitioners and justice actors with special attention to the techniques used.
期刊最新文献
Changes in legal referrals to specialty substance use disorder treatment from 2015-2019. Pre and post diagnostic dementia care in four Scottish prisons. Correction: Cervical cancer screening barriers and facilitators from the perspectives of women with a history of criminal-legal system involvement and substance use. Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the experiences of incarcerated pregnant people. Facilitators and barriers to the implementation of the biobehavioral survey among incarcerated individuals and correctional personnel in Mozambique, 2021- a descriptive study.
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
现在去查看 取消
×
提示
确定
0
微信
客服QQ
Book学术公众号 扫码关注我们
反馈
×
意见反馈
请填写您的意见或建议
请填写您的手机或邮箱
已复制链接
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
×
扫码分享
扫码分享
Book学术官方微信
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术
文献互助 智能选刊 最新文献 互助须知 联系我们:info@booksci.cn
Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。
Copyright © 2023 Book学术 All rights reserved.
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号 京ICP备2023020795号-1