JMIR Mental Health

Internet interventions, technologies, and digital innovations for mental health and behavior change.

JMIR Mental Health is the official journal of the Society of Digital Psychiatry

Editor-in-Chief:

John Torous, MD, MBI, Harvard Medical School, USA


Impact Factor 4.8 CiteScore 10.8

JMIR Mental Health (JMH, ISSN 2368-7959(Journal Impact Factor™ 4.8, (Journal Citation Reports™ from Clarivate, 2024)) is a premier, open-access, peer-reviewed journal indexed in PubMed Central and PubMed, MEDLINEScopus, Sherpa/Romeo, DOAJ, EBSCO/EBSCO Essentials, ESCI, PsycINFOCABI and SCIE.

JMIR Mental Health has a unique focus on digital health and Internet/mobile interventions, technologies, and electronic innovations (software and hardware) for mental health, addictions, online counseling, and behavior change. This includes formative evaluation and system descriptions, theoretical papers, review papers, viewpoint/vision papers, and rigorous evaluations related to digital psychiatry, e-mental health, and clinical informatics in psychiatry/psychology.

JMIR Mental Health received a CiteScore of 10.8, placing it in the 92nd percentile (#43 of 567) as a Q1 journal in the field of Psychiatry and Mental Health.

Recent Articles

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Reviews in Digital Mental Health

The integrated motivational-volitional model (IMV) is one of the leading theoretical models of suicidal thoughts and behavior. There has been a recent proliferation in the assessment of suicidal and nonsuicidal self-harm thoughts and behaviors (SHTBs) in daily life.

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Depression and Mood Disorders; Suicide Prevention

Suicide is the third-leading cause of death among US adolescents aged 10-19 years, and about 10% attempt suicide each year. School-based universal prevention may reduce youth suicidal behavior. Sources of Strength uses a peer leader network diffusion model to promote healthy norms across a school population. A key challenge within schoolwide programs is reaching a large and diverse array of students, especially those less engaged with their peers. Motivated by this challenge, we developed and field-tested Text4Strength—a program of automated text messages targeting help-seeking attitudes and norms, social coping resources, and emotion regulation skills.

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Innovations in Mental Health Systems

Indigenous Australians in custody experience much greater rates of poor mental health and well-being than those of the general community, and these problems are not adequately addressed. Digital mental health strategies offer innovative opportunities to address the problems, but little is known about their feasibility in or impact on this population.

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Reviews in Digital Mental Health

First-episode psychosis (FEP) imposes a substantial burden not only on the individual affected but also on their families. Given that FEP usually occurs during adolescence, families overtake a big part of informal care. Early family interventions, especially psychoeducation, are crucial for informal family caregivers to best support the recovery of their loved one with FEP and to reduce the risk of a psychotic relapse as much as possible, but also to avoid chronic stress within the family due to the burden of care. Digital health interventions offer the possibility to access help quicker, use less resources, and improve informal family caregiver outcomes, for example, by reducing stress and improving caregiver quality of life.

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Substance Abuse

The dual diagnosis of cannabis use disorder (CUD) and severe mental disorder (SMD) results in clinically complex individuals. Cannabis use is known to have negative consequences on psychiatric symptoms, medication compliance, and disease prognosis. Moreover, the effectiveness of currently available psychotherapeutic treatments is limited in this population.

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Eating Disorders

The need for scalable solutions facilitating access to eating disorder (ED) treatment services that are efficient, effective, and inclusive is a major public health priority. Remote access to synchronous and asynchronous support delivered via health apps has shown promise, but results are so far mixed, and there are limited data on whether apps can enhance health care utilization.

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Affective Computing

Cancer patients often face depression and anxiety, and Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs), including internet-based versions, can effectively reduce these symptoms and improve their quality of life. This study aims to investigate the impact of Internet-based Mindfulness-Based Interventions (e-MBIs) on anxiety, depression, and stress symptoms in prostate and breast cancer patients.

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Viewpoints and Opinions on Mental Health

Despite the efficacy of digital mental health technologies (DMHTs) in clinical trials, low uptake and poor engagement is common in real-world settings. Accordingly, digital technology experts or “Digital Navigators” are increasingly being used to enhance engagement and shared decision-making between health professionals and clients. Yet this area is relatively underexplored and there is a lack of data from naturalistic settings. In this paper we report observational findings from the implementation of a Digital Navigator in a multidisciplinary mental health clinic in Sydney, Australia. The Digital Navigator supported clients and health professionals to use a measurement-based DMHT, (the Innowell platform) for improved multidimensional outcome assessment and to guide personalized decision-making. Observational data is reported from implementation logs, platform usage statistics, and response rates to Digital Navigator e-mails and phone calls. Ultimately, support from the Digital Navigator led to improved data collection and clearer communications about goals for using the DMHT to track client outcomes, however this required strong partnerships between health professionals, digital navigator, and clients. The Digital Navigator helped to facilitate the integration of DMHT in to care, rather than providing a stand-alone service. Thus, collaborations between health professionals and Digital Navigators are mutually beneficial and empower clients to be more engaged in their own care.

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Virtual Reality Interventions in Mental Health

Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) is a promising treatment approach for anxiety disorders. However, while its efficacy has been demonstrated in adults, research on the efficacy of VRET in the treatment of adolescents with anxiety disorders is largely lacking.

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Viewpoints and Opinions on Mental Health

Social media is an integral part of adolescent’s daily lives, but the significant time adolescents invest in social media has raised concern about the effect on their mental health. Bans and severe restrictions on social media use are quickly emerging as an attempt to regulate social media use, however evidence supporting their effectiveness is limited. Adolescents experience several benefits from social media, including increased social connection, reduced loneliness, and a safe space for marginalized groups (e.g,. LGBTQ+) to interact. Rather than enforcing bans and severe restrictions, emotion regulation should be leveraged to help adolescents navigate the online social environment. This viewpoint paper proposes a nuanced approach towards regulating adolescent social media use by 1) discontinuing the use of ineffective bans, 2) recognizing the benefits social media use can have, and 3) fostering emotion regulation skills in adolescents to encourage the development of self-regulation.

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Mobile Health in Psychiatry

Real-time monitoring captures information about suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) as they occur and offers great promise to learn about STBs. However, this approach also introduces questions about how to monitor and respond to real-time information about STBs. Given the increasing use of real-time monitoring, there is a need for novel, effective, and scalable tools for responding to suicide risk in real time.

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