Like all areas of psychiatry, demand on child mental health services far exceeds capacity. Digital technologies are eagerly promoted as ways to redress the gap but the evidence base for sustained clinical impact in real-world mental health settings is often poor. In The Lancet Psychiatry, Cathy Creswell and colleagues present findings from a pragmatic trial based in child mental health services across England and Northern Ireland that investigated whether digital augmentation of parent-led cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) could improve efficiency without negatively affecting clinical efficacy. The non-inferiority trial compared digitally augmented, parent-led CBT for childhood anxiety with treatment as usual. Although applying digital tools (including smartphone apps, wearables, machine-learning, and artificial intelligence) to improve the delivery of mental health care is by no means a new concept, what sets Creswell and colleagues’ Article apart is the technical simplicity of their approach and that they applied it in a real-world setting.

Read the full article: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(24)00037-3/fulltext