What is Tele-Psychiatry?

Telemedicine is the process of providing health care from a distance through technology, often using videoconferencing. Tele-Psychiatry, a subset of telemedicine, can involve providing a range of services including psychiatric evaluations, therapy (individual therapy, group therapy, family therapy), patient education and medication management.

Benefits

Video-based Tele-Psychiatry helps meet patients’ needs for convenient, affordable and readily-accessible mental health services. It can benefit patients in several ways, such as:

• Improve access to mental health specialty care that might not otherwise be available (e.g., in rural areas)
• Bring care to the patient’s location
• Help integrate behavioral health care and primary care, leading to better outcomes
• Reduce the need for trips to the emergency room
• Reduce delays in care
• Improve continuity of care and follow-up
• Reduce the need for time off work, childcare services, etc. to access appointments far away
• Reduce potential transportation barriers, such as lack of transportation or the need for long drives
• Reduce the barrier of stigma