Welcome to the EPA 2022 Interactive Programme 

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Telemental health care can be defined as the delivery of mental health care services at distance, by using information and communication technologies for the exchange of valid information for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mental illnesses, as well as for research and education in the field of clinical psychiatry. While telemental health care practice was long established in many countries, its development proceeded with some variability worldwide. Over the past months, however, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has abruptly spread telemental health care practice worldwide, mostly to ensure the provision of care and assistance to psychiatric patients in spite of the governmental social contact restrictions. Although the process of rapid implementation has often happened at different rates and with different quality standards, across the various countries and sites, a global increase of the use of digital technologies has been reported. On the other hand, such recent events have also sparked a real paradigm shift in mental health care, significantly expanding the scope of e-mental health, given the recent availability of newer tools of digital psychiatry. In more detail, the use of mobile phones applications, of social media, of immersive reality and of chatbots is now driving psychiatry towards envisioning a more hybrid form of psychiatric practice, which holds the potential to finally overcome the traditional gap between the unmet needs of psychiatric patients and the relative lack of services and resources in mental health care. Here, the research evidence and the most compelling implementation issues in digital psychiatry will be reviewed.

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Digital treatment for neurodevelopmental disorders is being developed in order to treat patients online when possible, to reduce waitinglists, and to improve efficiency of treatment.

In this workshop, first experiences with the so called Start Programme of the Super Brains app for ADHD in adults are presented. The Super Brains app has been developed by Rutger den Hollander, who himself has ADHD and owns an ICT company in the Netherlands, in cooperation with the speaker of this workshop and Parnassiagroep.

The Start Programme is a new part of the Super Brains app, meant for patients referred for treatment that have to wait on often long waitinglists. Now they have no longer to wait, but can start immediately preparing for assessment by filling in questionnaires, and with psycho-education, lifestyle tips and support by experience experts that welcome them in the app and show them around.

First data on the use of different parts of the Start Programme, the activity of patients in the app, and the satisfaction of patients will be presented. We also aim to study whether the Start Progamme is effective in reducing severity of ADHD symptoms.

Super Brains can be adjusted for use in patients with other (neurodevelopmental) disorders easily.

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COVID-19 pandemic had an important impact in mental health across all countries and populations. However, health care professionals, particularly those in the front line have been subjected to increased levels of stress, workload, deterioration of work environment and working conditions while potentially being afraid of contracting the infection themselves or infecting love ones due to the higher risk of contagion when dealing with infected patients. Some studies have stressed out this impact showing increased levels of burnout, depression, hopelessness, stress and post-traumatic stress in all physicians however, the impact of the pandemic may have been different depending on the specialty.

We intended to study the impact of COVID-19 pandemic for doctors working at general hospitals and liaison psychiatrists dealing with COVID-19 patients in Europe.

We developed and applied online questionnaires to physicians working at general hospitals and psychiatrists working at liaison services, in different European countries (Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Greece, Poland, Croatia), in order to determine what were their working conditions and it they reported mental health symptoms during the pandemic. This questionnaire included demographic data, questions about working conditions when dealing with general and COVID patients and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS). It was distributed thought email and social media platforms used by doctors.

This work has been approved by each local Ethics committee and all participants signed an informed consent.