Telepsychology in Europe since COVID-19: How to Foster Social Telepresence?

All over the world, measures were taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Social distancing not only had a strong influence on mental health, but also on the organization of care systems. It changed existing practices, as we had to rapidly move from face-to-face contact to remote contact with patients.

The feasibility of using Apple's ResearchKit for recruitment and data collection: Considerations for mental health research.

In 2015, Apple launched an open-source software framework called ResearchKit. ResearchKit provides an infrastructure for conducting remote, smartphone-based research trials through the means of Apple's App Store. Such trials may have several advantages over conventional trial methods including the removal of geographic barriers, frequent assessments of participants in real-life settings, and increased inclusion of seldom-heard communities.

Evaluation of a tactile breath pacer for sleep problems: A mixed method pilot study.

Sleep problems, like insomnia, are a prevalent condition associated with major health risks. Prevention and treatment of sleep problems are thus essential to preserve physical and mental health. Previous work supports the effectiveness of breathing guidance for sleep problems and recommends breathing exercises as an effective intervention for insomnia.

Online consultations in mental healthcare: Modelling determinants of use and experience based on an international survey study at the onset of the pandemic.

Introduction: While online consultations have shown promise to be a means for the effective delivery of high-quality mental healthcare and the first implementations of these digital therapeutic contacts go back nearly two decades, uptake has remained limited over the years. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically altered this relative standstill and created a unique turning point, with a massive amount of both professionals and clients having first hands-on experiences with technology in mental healthcare.

Objective: The current study aimed to document the uptake of online consultations and explore if specific characteristics of mental health professionals across and beyond Europe could predict this.

Rehabilitation Supported by Technology: Protocol for an International Cocreation and User Experience Study.

Background: Living labs in the health and well-being domain have become increasingly common over the past decade but vary in available infrastructure, implemented study designs, and outcome measures. The Horizon 2020 Project Virtual Health and Wellbeing Living Lab Infrastructure aims to harmonize living lab procedures and open living lab infrastructures to facilitate and promote research activities in the health and well-being domain in Europe and beyond. This protocol will describe the design of a joint research activity, focusing on the use of innovative technology for both rehabilitation interventions and data collection in a rehabilitation context.

Technological and Digital Interventions for Mental Health and Wellbeing: An Overview of Systematic Reviews.

Research increasingly shows how selective and targeted use of technology within care and welfare can have several advantages including improved quality of care and active user involvement. The current overview of reviews aims to summarize the research on the effectiveness of technology for mental health and wellbeing. The goal is to highlight and structure the diverse combinations of technologies and interventions used so far, rather than to summarize the effectiveness of singular approaches.

Cross-cultural differences in user-centred research: An international living lab survey.

Digital health applications and interactive technologies increasingly allow organisations to transcend national boundaries and expand the provision of tools and services to communities across the world. Making the transfer beyond the context in which applications were originally conceptualized is challenging, as these have to be tailored towards local end-user needs and regulations. Such information is not always readily available, which risks successful uptake in novel settings.

Online consultations in mental healthcare during the COVID-19 outbreak: An international survey study on professionals' motivations and perceived barriers.

Introduction: While the general uptake of e-mental health interventions remained low over the past years, physical distancing and lockdown measures relating to the COVID-19 pandemic created a need and demand for online consultations in only a matter of weeks.

Objective: This study investigates the uptake of online consultations provided by mental health professionals during lockdown measures in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the participating countries, with a specific focus on professionals' motivations and perceived barriers regarding online consultations.

Methods: An online survey on the use of online consultations was set up in March 2020.

Physiological and self-reported arousal in virtual reality versus face-to-face emotional activation and cognitive restructuring in university students: A crossover experimental study using wearable monitoring.

Background: Arousal may be important for learning to restructure ones' negative cognitions, a core technique in depression treatment. In virtual reality (VR), situations may be experienced more vividly than, e.g.

Telepsychotherapy During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Experience of Lebanese Mental Health Professionals.

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken the mental health system by surprise, with the state of lockdown forcing businesses to close their doors, including many mental health services. This has driven many psychotherapists and other mental health professionals towards telepsychotherapy, relying on online consultations to provide continuity of care. However, the adoption of telepsychotherapy required major adaptations from both mental health professionals and patients.

Dropping the E: The potential for integrating e-mental health in psychotherapy.

E-mental health, or the use of technology in mental healthcare, has been the focus of research for over two decades. Over that period, the evidence base for the potential of technology to improve psychotherapeutic practice has grown steadily. This sharply contrasts with the actual use of e-mental health by psychotherapists, which has remained limited.

Combining Biofeedback with Stress Management Interventions: A Systematic Review of Physiological and Psychological Effects.

Current mental healthcare systems experience difficulties meeting the challenges of a growing population with elevated stress symptoms. Outpatient stress management interventions have already proven to be effective in routine care and recent technological advances now allow to expand such interventions, for example by adding a physiological component like biofeedback. Adding biofeedback to stress management interventions appears promising, but there is a lack of insight into the general conceptualization and evaluation of the resulting interventions, both in relation to psychological and physiological stress indicators.

Psychophysiological correlates of emotion regulation training in adolescent anxiety: Evidence from the novel PIER task.

Background: Anxiety disorders are the leading cause of mental illness in adolescence. While anxious adolescents show impairments in emotion processing and deficits in emotion regulation, few studies have attempted to improve emotion regulation within these populations.

Method: This study used a multi-method design to test a newly developed emotion regulation training aimed at improving insight into emotions and instructing cognitive reappraisal.

White matter integrity in brain networks relevant to anxiety and depression: evidence from the human connectome project dataset.

Anxiety and depression are associated with altered communication within global brain networks and between these networks and the amygdala. Functional connectivity studies demonstrate an effect of anxiety and depression on four critical brain networks involved in top-down attentional control (fronto-parietal network; FPN), salience detection and error monitoring (cingulo-opercular network; CON), bottom-up stimulus-driven attention (ventral attention network; VAN), and default mode (default mode network; DMN). However, structural evidence on the white matter (WM) connections within these networks and between these networks and the amygdala is lacking.

Getting to the Heart of Emotion Regulation in Youth: The Role of Interoceptive Sensitivity, Heart Rate Variability, and Parental Psychopathology.

Emotion regulation and associated autonomic activation develop throughout childhood and adolescence under the influence of the family environment. Specifically, physiological indicators of autonomic nervous system activity such as interoceptive sensitivity and vagally mediated heart rate variability (HRV) can inform on emotion regulation. Although the effect of parental emotion socialization on emotion regulation appears to be influenced by autonomic processes, research on physiological regulation and the influence of parental factors remains scarce.

Treatment for outpatients with comorbid schizophrenia and substance use disorders: a review.

Aims: This review provides evidence of which interventions need to be part of effective outpatient integrated treatment for patients with comorbid schizophrenia and substance use disorders.

Methods: A total of 14 randomized controlled trials were included. Effect sizes are provided to assess the magnitude of the treatments' efficacy.