ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Digital Mental Health
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1409455
This article is part of the Research TopicDigitalization and Mental Health: Challenges and Ethical AspectsView all 8 articles
Exploring the Acceptability of Remote Care for People with Psychotic Disorders in the Community: Practical Challenges and Desired Features
Provisionally accepted
- 1East London NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom
- 2Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London, London, London, United Kingdom
- 3School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Queen Mary University of London, London, England, United Kingdom
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Introduction: People with psychosis are more likely to experience paranoia, which can be worsened by technology use, and have lower digital literacy comparative to the general population and other serious mental illness populations (e.g., recurrent depression). The expedited uptake of remotely delivered mental healthcare by secondary mental health services in the UK in recent years (most notably during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic) provides an opportunity to understand how service users with psychosis, and their clinicians, view the impact of rising digitization within mental health services. This study aimed to explore the present factors encouraging and discouraging the use of remote care options through using the example of a face-to-face intervention, DIALOG+, currently being developed to be delivered remotely. A secondary objective was to identify which requirements need to be met for clinicians and service users to willingly adopt novel remote interventions.Methods: 9 workshop-focus groups were conducted in total, 6 with service users with psychosis (n= 17) and 3 with clinicians (n=21). Participants were recruited from community mental health services from urban (East London) and rural (Cornwall) settings so that comparisons could be made across contexts. Workshop-focus groups were recorded and transcribed before analysis using the framework method.Results: The analysis identified four overarching themes: Factors influencing the acceptability of remote care; Adaptability of remote care for inclusivity; Influence of remote care on therapeutic relationships; and Desirable features in remote care.
Keywords: remote care, therapeutic relationship, accessible care, psychosis, User design
Received: 30 Mar 2024; Accepted: 19 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Abdel-Halim, Kuhn, Bourdin, Bird, Healey and McNamee. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Philip McNamee, East London NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom
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