Digital solutions offer advantages that can be essential in dealing with the current mental care needs worldwide:
• Online communities on platforms such as Reddit, TikTok, Weibo, and more have provided many young adults with community and a safe place to form essential human connections over the internet. These connections can, and often, lead to intra-city or intra-community connections and result in in-person social interactions that are no longer just digital.
• Digital or tele-interventions tend to be more easily available and scalable than traditional face-to-face therapy. With many health professionals turning to tele-medicine and tele-therapy in light of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, mental health-tech is a powerful tool in reducing structural and economic barriers that have traditionally prevented people from seeking mental healthcare.
• Mobile networks currently cover 85% of the world population. This presents a great opportunity to distribute internet-based digital interventions. However, in low-income countries, only 20% of the population has internet access. But even then, this presents an opportunity for governments to provide tele-therapy and tele-medicine cheaply.
• Online interactions and consultations do not require travel, reducing the burden of time and cost. For online mental healthcare, help is available to vulnerable people beyond work hours and fits easily around home and work schedules, especially between 2-3 AM when suicide rates peak.
• Digital interventions for loneliness can be provided without compromising anonymity; the stigma attached to seeking psychiatric help is mitigated.