Online Screening Bridges Mental Health Care Gaps in Underserved Rural Communities, Study Finds

Online screening is a vital tool in bridging mental health care gaps in rural, resource-deficient communities, according to a study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

“The proliferation of online mental health screening tools are considered a key strategy to increase identification, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness,” explained Elad Yom-Tov, Microsoft Research Israel in Herzeliya, Israel, and Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Isreal, and coauthors. “However, research on real-world effectiveness, especially in hard to reach rural communities, is limited.”

Using a national, online, population-based cohort of Microsoft Bing search engine users across 18 months in the US, researchers found that the availability of mental health care and the level of rurality in the county alone accounted for 42% of the variance in the completion rate of online mental health screens for anxiety, bipolar disorder, depression, and psychosis. The results were statistically significant (R²=0.42, P<5.0×10−6).

“The results suggested that online screening was more prominent in underserved rural communities, therefore presenting as important tools with which to bridge mental health care gaps in rural, resource-deficient areas,” wrote the study authors.

Reference

Yom-Tov E, Lekkas D, Heinz MV, Nguyen T, Barr PJ, Jacobson NC. Digitally filling the access gap in mental health care: An investigation of the association between rurality and online engagement with validated self-report screens across the United States. J Psychiatr Res. 2023;157:112-118. doi:10.1016/j.jpsychires.2022.11.024