Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2024. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatry. Mar 19, 2024; 14(3): 350-361
Published online Mar 19, 2024. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v14.i3.350
Digital psychiatry in low-and-middle-income countries: New developments and the way forward
Subho Chakrabarti
Subho Chakrabarti, Department of Psychiatry, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh 160012, UT, India
Author contributions: Chakrabarti S was the sole author of this manuscript, decided the theme of the manuscript, performed the literature search, and drafted the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest to disclose.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Subho Chakrabarti, MD, Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, 12 Sector, Chandigarh, Chandigarh 160012, UT, India. subhochd@yahoo.com
Received: January 1, 2024
Peer-review started: January 1, 2024
First decision: January 21, 2024
Revised: January 28, 2024
Accepted: February 29, 2024
Article in press: February 29, 2024
Published online: March 19, 2024
Processing time: 77 Days and 19.5 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Given the substantial mental health burden and treatment gap in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), there is a pressing need to implement digital psychiatric services to augment conventional mental healthcare. LMICs have traditionally lagged in this area, but there have been some encouraging developments recently. They include the increasing evidence of the efficacy of digital psychiatric interventions and the growing use of mobile technologies to provide mental health services and optimize task-shifting. However, there are many gaps in the delivery of digital psychiatric services, which need to be overcome by efficiently organizing these services to improve mental healthcare in LMICs.