How might developments in e-mental health influence mental health nursing practice in the coming decade

E-Mental Health and the Future of Nursing Practice Details: al Affiliation: E-Mental Health and the Future of Nursing Practice
From meaningful use to accountable care, transformative healthcare trends are taking new career trajectories, in effect, rendering the yesterday’s service delivery mechanisms irrelevant, to be precise. Indeed there is no doubt that the advances that until recently weren’t that useful, those in the nursing profession included, has revolutionized clinical practice, with both the health care providers and the consumers at the receiving end gaining and/or losing in almost equal measure.
As the developments of e-therapy takes even more advanced and dynamic dimensions, for instance, personalized interventions through the use of the handy gadgets such mobile phones is set to open even more ways of monitoring patients’ symptoms and/or condition in real time, allowing for early, prompt intervention and the prevention of relapse in cases of emergencies (Christen & Petrie, 2013b). Accordingly, the advances will leverage professional roles, reserving such for more complex cases as e-mental health gears up to cater for milder problems forming the bulk in the area discussed herein. With advanced, automated applications for monitoring situational risks such as disaster hit regions, opportunities exist for timely interventions to avoid overwhelming casualties. To be certain, it is already much easier to disseminate mental health information online, more particularly through the social media (Christen & Petrie, 2013a; Christen & Petrie, 2013b); a fact which is set to get even more rapid over significantly larger populations in years to come, particularly with regards to the collection and/or processing of large amounts of data from dispersed populations by the nursing professionals around the world. Arguably, the direct informational access online is already changing the practioner-consumer power arrangements towards the latter, with consumers sharing information of what treatments works, the professionals providing the best services, as well as the grey areas that still need research amongst themselves (Jorm, Morgan, & Malhi, 2013).
As Jorm, Morgan, & Malhi (2013) concludes, quite a number of issues remains to be solved to secure the advantages brought about by e-mental healthcare systems. That though such technologies continue to easen the collection and the dissemination of information, which e-mental health is all about, the impending implications for this very unique health sector remains largely unknown, for the developments would have to undergo satisfactory experimentation to ensure absolute safety.
References
Christen, H., & Petrie, K. (2013a). Information technology as the key to accelerating advances in
mental health care. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 47(2) 114-116.
Christen, H., & Petrie, K. (2013b). State of the e-mental health field in Australia: Where to now?
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 47 (2), 117-120.
Jorm, A. F., Morgan, A. J., & Malhi, G. S. (2013). The future of e-mental health. Australian
and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 47(2)104-106.