Factors Affecting Digital Tool Use in Client Interaction According to Mental Health Professionals: Interview Study (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Digital tools and therapies are being increasingly developed in response to the growing mental health crisis, and mental health professionals (MHP) have considerable influence on their adoption. Yet, how MHPs use digital tools has remained insufficiently understood, which poses challenges to their design, development, and implementation. OBJECTIVE The study aims to create contextual understanding of how MHPs use different digital tools in clinical practice, and what characterizes the usage across tools. METHODS 19 MHPs were thematically interviewed, and the data were transcribed, coded, and inductively analyzed. RESULTS We found that MHP digital tool usage was characterized by four distinct functions: communication, diagnosis and evaluation, facilitating therapeutic change, and managing client data. Our research focused on the first three categories and found that MHPs use solutions ranging from analogue, to digitized, and to digital. The MHP client communication has grown to include various digital mediums alongside face-to-face meetings; symptom questionnaires were digitizing; and MHPs actively used digital materials to facilitate therapeutic change. Across the digital tools, the usage was characterized by adaptability: the usage was negotiated in client interaction. There was, however, considerable variance in the breadth of MHPs’ digital toolbox. We describe how the existing treatment practices, that emphasize MHP-client interaction, are likely to invite incremental rather than radical developments which challenges achieving scalability benefits native to digital tools. CONCLUSIONS MHPs use digital tools increasingly in client interaction. By describing how MHPs use, and do not use, digital tools in their practice, our results contribute to the user-centered research, development, and implementation of digital solutions in mental health care. CLINICALTRIAL Mental health professionals’ views and needs regarding game-based digital therapeutics https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/B8EG6

Advancing the acceptability of game-based digital mental health interventions: A qualitative study on clinicians’ views

“…These contextual factors may increase familiarity with digital tools and video games. The interview participation may also be associated with self-selection, and interviews may attract participants with an interest in and favorable attitudes toward the topic (110). Follow-up studies are needed to investigate whether the MHPs' frames and self-client attitude asymmetry can be found in other populations and with different methods.…”

Factors Affecting Digital Tool Use in Client Interaction According to Mental Health Professionals: Interview Study

“…The study was approved by the Aalto University research ethics committee (D/508/03.04/2022), and the research design was preregistered in the Open Science Framework [64].…”