Background: Telemedicine-based interventions show promise in addressing mental health issues among rural populations, yet evidence regarding their impact among the health care workforce in these contexts remains limited.

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the characteristics and the responses and perceptions of recently graduated physicians who work in rural areas of Peru as part of the Servicio Rural Urbano Marginal en Salud (Rural-Urban Marginal Health Service [SERUMS], in Spanish) toward a telehealth intervention to provide remote orientation and accompaniment in mental health.

Methods: A mixed methods study was carried out involving physicians who graduated from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and participated in the Mental Health Accompaniment Program (MHAP) from August 2022 to February 2023. This program included the assessment of mental health conditions via online forms, the dissemination of informational materials through a website, and, for those with moderate or high levels of mental health issues, the provision of personalized follow-up by trained personnel. Quantitative analysis explored the mental health issues identified among physicians, while qualitative analysis, using semistructured interviews, examined their perceptions of the services provided.

Results: Of 75 physicians initially enrolled to the MHAP, 30 (41.6%) opted to undergo assessment and use the services. The average age of the participants was 26.8 (SD 1.9) years, with 17 (56.7%) being female. About 11 (36.7%) reported have current or previous mental health issues, 17 (56.7%) indicating some level of depression, 14 (46.7%) indicated some level of anxiety, 5 (16.6%) presenting a suicidal risk, and 2 (6.7%) attempted suicide during the program. Physicians who did not use the program services reported a lack of advertising and related information, reliance on personal mental health resources, or neglect of symptoms. Those who used the program expressed a positive perception regarding the services, including evaluation and follow-up, although some faced challenges accessing the website.

Conclusions: The MHAP has been effective in identifying and managing mental health problems among SERUMS physicians in rural Peru, although it faced challenges related to access and participation. The importance of mental health interventions in this context is highlighted, with recommendations to improve accessibility and promote self-care among participants.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11422723PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/54005DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

mental health
40
health issues
16
health
12
mental
11
physicians rural
8
mixed methods
8
methods study
8
faced challenges
8
physicians
7
program
6

Similar Publications

The current study aims to determine how the interactions between practice (distributed/focused) and mental capacity (high/low) in the cloud-computing environment (CCE) affect the development of reproductive health skills and cognitive absorption. The study employed an experimental design, and it included a categorical variable for mental capacity (low/high) and an independent variable with two types of activities (distributed/focused). The research sample consisted of 240 students from the College of Science and College of Applied Medical Sciences at the University of Hail's.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The COVID-19 outbreak, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, was linked to significant neurological and psychiatric manifestations. This review examines the physiopathological mechanisms underlying these neuropsychiatric outcomes and discusses current management strategies. Primarily a respiratory disease, COVID-19 frequently leads to neurological issues, including cephalalgia and migraines, loss of sensory perception, cerebrovascular accidents, and neurological impairment such as encephalopathy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The field of emotion recognition from physiological signals is a growing area of research with significant implications for both mental health monitoring and human-computer interaction. This study introduces a novel approach to detecting emotional states based on fractal analysis of electrodermal activity (EDA) signals. We employed detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), Hurst exponent estimation, and wavelet entropy calculation to extract fractal features from EDA signals obtained from the CASE dataset, which contains physiological recordings and continuous emotion annotations from 30 participants.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Personalized Clustering for Emotion Recognition Improvement.

Sensors (Basel)

December 2024

Instituto de Estudios de Género, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Calle Madrid, 126, 28903 Getafe, Spain.

Emotion recognition through artificial intelligence and smart sensing of physical and physiological signals (affective computing) is achieving very interesting results in terms of accuracy, inference times, and user-independent models. In this sense, there are applications related to the safety and well-being of people (sexual assaults, gender-based violence, children and elderly abuse, mental health, etc.) that require even more improvements.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!