Patients Seeking Mental Health Care Want More Say in In-Person, Virtual Appointments

Nearly 1 in 3 adults receiving mental health treatment who were surveyed earlier this year said they don ’t have much choice when it comes to whether they see their clinician in person or via telehealth. In part, this was because those surveyed reported that they did not see clinicians who offered both in-person and telehealth visits.These were a few of the key takeaways from areport published this afternoon inHealth Affairs.“Although preferences regarding modality varied, with some preferring in-person care and others preferring telehealth for different types of behavioral health visits, the majority of interview participants wanted to have the choice,” wrote Jessica Sousa, M.S.W., M.P.H., of the RAND Corporation a nd colleagues.The researchers conducted a nationally representative survey of 2,071 U.S. adults (average age 49 years, 74% White) in early 2023, including 571 who used behavioral health services in the prior year. They also completed in-depth interviews with 26 people with bipolar disorder or depression during this time. The participants were asked whether their clinicians were offering both in-person and telehealth visits for medication or individual therapy and how decisions about whether they saw the clinician in person or virtually were decided.Recipients of individual therapy were about twice as likely to have telehealth visits (80%) as in-person visits (42%) during the prior year, the researchers found. Those seen for medication visits were about equal...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: behavioral health care Health Affairs in-person medication management mental health care patient preference telehealth therapy virtual Source Type: research