Andres Barkil-Oteo, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale and a psychiatrist consultant with Doctors Without Borders, has edited a new book on telemental health.
The book, Telemental Health in Resource-Limited Global Settings, was published by Oxford University Press. It is the first book to focus on the application of telemental health in low-income settings throughout the world.
Telemental health is the practice of using videoconferencing, email, telephone, text messaging, and other technology to connect practitioners with patients from a distance. It allows patients who may be too sick or do not have the resources to travel to receive mental health and other physician services remotely.
The book explains the use of technology to provide mental health care to patients in locations like Africa, India, the Middle East, Australia, and the United States.
Barkil-Oteo's work focuses on using technology to increase capacity of non-specialists to deliver effective and high-quality mental health care in low-income settings. He is the founder of the Syrian Tele-mental Health Network, a secure online platform that enables clinicians in humanitarian settings to ask questions about their patients, and to receive general mental health training and supervision from specialists in North America, Europe, and the Middle East through electronic text or recorded audio-visual materials.
Barkil-Oteo's co-editor of the book is Hussam Jefee-Bahloul, MD, former advanced clinical fellow in the Yale Department of Psychiatry.