Volume 25, Issue 111, May, 2021

Willingness and preference for using telehealth services among patients with depression

Bayaneh Amini¹, Leila R Kalankesh^1,2♦, Reza Ferdousi¹, Mostafa Farahbakhsh², Farhad Fatehi³

¹Department of Health Information Technology, School of Management and Medical Informatics, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
²Research Center of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
³School of Psychological Sciences and the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

^♦Corresponding author
Leila R. Kalankesh, School of Management and Medical Informatics, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran

ABSTRACT

Background: Depression is a common mental disorder for which telehealth services can provide support. The willingness to use these solutions among patients is among factors related to the use of such solutions. The study aim was to investigate the willingness and preference of patients with depression for using telehealth solutions for depression. Materials and Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study between beginning of April and end of August 2019. We administered a questionnaire to 146 people with depression. The sampling method in this study was non-probability. We assessed the Patients’ willingness and preference for using telehealth services for depression based on a researcher-constructed questionnaire. Results: About 87.67% of the participants were women. The average age of participants was 29.62. Sixty participants (41.09%) reported using telehealth services for their mental health in the past. They highlighted reasons such as lack of enough time, not being able to afford the cost of a face-to-face consultation, fear of disclosure of the information about their face-to-face visit, lack of consent by a family member for a face-to-face visit, the likelihood of being seen by others in the health setting and possibility of stigma, and distrust of consultant for their preference. More than 58 % of the participants showed high and very high willingness to use telehealth consultations. Preference of patients with depression toward the functionality of mobile health (m-health) solutions for depression was the behavioral activation/behavioral goals monitoring (77.39%), followed by the communication with psychologists and mental health experts (50.68%) and monitoring changes in mood or behavior (36.30%). Conclusion: Given the relatively high willingness of patients with depression to functionalities for behavioral activation and communication with the therapists, it appears inevitable to develop a mobile app for meeting the patients’ demands.

Keywords: willingness, preference, depression, telehealth, teleconsultation, functionality

Medical Science, 2021, 25(111),1133-1139

PDF