Associate Professor West Liberty University, Pennsylvania, United States
Overview: Clinical Practice in the field of Social Work focuses on the assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental illness. The shift of our society to an online world has influenced the medical field to shift as well. Clinical practitioners now provide mental health treatment interventions through the use of technology.Proposal text: Clinical Practice in the field of Social Work focuses on the assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental illness. The shift of our society to an online world has influenced the medical field to shift as well. Clinical practitioners now provide mental health treatment interventions through the use of technology. This method is known as “telemedicine” or “telemental health” (Bunnell et. al., 2020). Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals and families have faced uncertain scenarios, directly and indirectly increasing the demand for mental health services. This crisis has challenged social workers to immediately respond to urgent social needs, forcing them to shift to a web-based solution (Davies et. al., 2020). According to the Sustainability Journal, a study was conducted on the “sustainability of social services” during the COVID-19 pandemic (Redondo-Sama et. al., 2020). The results showed that telemedicine has the potential to provide a long-term impact in the treatment of mental health disorders. Another study conducted by the JMIR Mental Health Journal examined the effectiveness of digital mental health interventions through a narrative review method. The results suggested that telemedicine provided a therapeutic alliance to the treatment of mental health (Tremain et.al., 2020). The demand to flip the delivery of mental health services from in-clinic to online is not only effective, but it is necessary. The solution to the public mental health crisis is to rely on telemedicine as an ongoing intervention in the future (Davenport et. al., 2020). Keywords: Telemedicine, telemental health, clinical practice
