Virtual Mental Health Care for Rural and Underserved Settings

This book focuses on the critical area of delivering mental health services in rural settings.  It is designed as a practical guide to the technological provision of timely, effective, evidence-based care, helpful to the novice and the experienced practitioner alike.  

The benefits of this approach are: 

• Improved access to and improved quality of care
• Technical support for providers and administrators
• A means of providing missing specialty care
• An ability to maximize scarce resources and significant flexibility for health service delivery.

The book will cover how to adjust therapeutic skills to patients’ needs, models of care and the particular technology used. It shows how rudimentary design of workflow can assist in integrating care, and highlights the importance of allowing for cultural needs (both rural geography and ethnic/race). Administrative issues are also addressed (e.g., privacy, reimbursement). The chapters are short and designed for maximum practicality, including learning objectives, cases and summaries emphasizing “what to do and how to do it.” 

Donald M. Hilty, MD, MBA is a scholar in psychiatric and medical education, health services, and telemedicine. He works with the Northern California Veterans Administration Health Care System and UC Davis. His current role is in health care administration, technology implementation and service delivery. He speaks internationally and researches models of care, health economics and a variety of technologies (e.g., synchronous and asynchronous telepsychiatry, mobile health and informatics). Dr. Hilty is also active with pedagogy, faculty development and publishing work (e.g., telepsychiatry, telebehavioral health, social media and mobile health competencies). Dr. Hilty serves as Editor of both the Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science and Psychology and Cognitive Science. He is on the APA-IOM and APA-ATA Guideline Writing Groups.

Matthew C. Mishkind, PhD is a scholar and administrator with the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Anschutz Medical Campus. He currently serves as Deputy Director of the Johnson Depression Center, Director of the Community Engagement Service, and Director of Strategic Facilitation for the Office of Telehealth and Technology Implementation for Behavioral Health Practice and Science. His current role focuses on health care administration, the development of innovative telehealth programs, and the development and implementation of community-based behavioral health training initiatives. He serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science and mHealth, and is a lead for the APA-ATA Guideline writing groups. Dr. Mishkind speaks internationally about the use of technology to improve access to and quality of behavioral health care, and has published over 40 peer-reviewed papers and chapters primarily focused on improving access to behavioral health care.   

Tania S. Malik, J.D is a lawyer by trade and an entrepreneur by practice. She is the Chief Executive Officer of the Virtual Medical Services (VMS) and Virtual Benefit Management Group, Inc (VBMS). VBMS is a management services company that builds telehealth technology. VMS is the first use case of that technology and provides Independent Medical Opinions to veterans after a telehealth consult. As a result of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, she started COPE Today, which is a telemental health company. She is the former ATA Telemental Health Special Interest Group Chair, ATA2020 Telehealth Woman of the Year, and elected to the College of Fellows for ATA in 2021. Ms. Malik graduated from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Georgia State University School of Law and a member of the bar in North Carolina and Georgia.

Allison Crawford, MD, PhD, is a psychiatrist and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, where she is the Medical Director of Virtual Care and Northern Health at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and the Chief Medical Officer for the Canada Suicide Prevention Service. She is also co-Chair of ECHO Ontario. At the time of writing, Allison was a Fulbright Research Chair in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Through these roles Allison advances health systems and the integration of technology into the provision of remote healthcare. Dr. Crawford has worked as a psychiatrist in Nunavut for over 15 years, and coordinates psychiatry services for the Government of Nunavut.