Digital Assessment and Intervention for Children and Adolescents with Neurodevelopmental Disorder

The outbreak of COVID-19 has increased the prevalence of a series of mental disorders in public, partly due to social distancing or quarantine, especially for children and adolescents. In this population, neurodevelopmental disorders, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), tic disorder (TD), and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), have been a major concern for their mental health, which has also been impaired by low levels of social interactions. Additionally, limited access to mental health care services is one of the major barriers to seeking help in this population. To address these issues, digital mental health equipment can be a potential solution to increase access to mental health care by offering innovative ways to help meet patients’ demands and providing automated psychological care and intervention.

Digital health interventions (DHIs) can be implemented by applications of various internet programs. Through online capturing of real-time symptoms and behaviors related to mental disorders, digital phenotyping can offer an efficient way to help psychologists remotely but quickly evaluate and monitor individuals’ mental health status regardless of their location, and thus, help increase the accessibility, provide more prompt feedback, and promote interventional effectiveness in real-life contexts. Moreover, digital technologies, such as smartphones, can gain a vast amount of data, which can be used in the assessment of these mental disorders, especially for those with mild or subsyndromal psychological disorders. Especially, considering the increased digital literacy and internet use among children and adolescents, digital health technologies have a great potential to serve as an effective method for mental health assessment and interventions in this population. For research on mental health, it is essential to utilize more advanced and comprehensive digital technologies to offer more insights about both mental health assessment and intervention for children and adolescents with neurodevelopmental disorders.

The goal of this research topic is mainly to highlight the importance of digital mental health with the usage of digital devices in children and adolescents with neurodevelopmental disorders. We also aim to investigate the methods, effects, and long-term outcomes of digital mental health intervention and assessment for this population. Finally, we hope to explore more effective and affordable digital equipment for children and adolescents with mental health problems.

We welcome Original Research, and literature reviews, including (but not limited to) the following topics:
- Feasible, reliable, and valid assessment of various neurodevelopmental disorders and related symptoms.
- The application of different digital mental health devices for neurodevelopmental disorder screening, assessment, and intervention.
- Digital phenotyping for the assessment and prediction of neurodevelopmental disorders.
- Changes in phenotypes of different clinical symptoms of neurodevelopmental disorders and their influence on interventional outcomes through digital solutions.
- The neurological, neuropsychiatric, and neurodevelopmental mechanisms for neurodevelopmental disorders detected by digital solutions.

Keywords: Digital Mental Health, Digital Screening, Digital Assessment, Digital Intervention, Digital Phenotyping, Digital Devices, Neurodevelopmental Disorder, Children and Adolescents

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