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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Front. Hum. Dyn.
Sec. Digital Impacts
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fhumd.2024.1502432
This article is part of the Research Topic Ethical Dilemmas of Digitalisation of Mental Health View all 4 articles

Bibliometric Analysis of research in Ethical concerns and Dilemmas of Digital Mental

Provisionally accepted
Poonam Sharma Poonam Sharma 1*Rekha Wagani Rekha Wagani 2Mahima Anna Varghese Mahima Anna Varghese 1
  • 1 School of Social Sciences and Languages, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India
  • 2 Universal AI University, Maharashtra, India

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Digital mental health care system includes the interventions via digital technologies, such as mobile apps, websites, or virtual reality (VR). A recent upsurge in the digital mental healthcare care services is observed in the last five years. With its core advantage of reaching the unreached, wider coverage, cost and time effectivity. It is definitely a mechanism to cater rising prevalence of mental health concerns, de stigmatising and accessibility to mental health in cost effective manner. Success of the digital mental health care system has been researched world-wide. However, the same is not unaffected by the ethical concerns. This study aims to perform a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of scholarly articles on ethical concerns and dilemmas of digital mental health care by utilizing data extracted from the Scopus database from 2000 to 2024 by analysing 123 research articles. Statistical descriptive analysis in combination with performance analysis and co-word analysis was used to understand the research trends, leading countries and country collaborations studying ethical concerns related to digital mental healthcare. The first publication appeared in 2000 with zero research till the year 2005. In this decade till 2010 we can observe only 4 publications. Consistent publishing started trending upward through 2018, observing the largest increase during pandemic in 2020 and onwards constituting 100 publications. The United States of America is the leading country studying ethical dilemmas in Digital Mental healthcare, with 42 papers followed by United Kingdom with 23 publications. The most influential peace of research with 490 citations is article co-authored by Barak, Klein and Proudfoot (2009), which is defining internet-supported therapeutic interventions and related concerns. BMJ Open is noted as the leading journal which is publishing issues concerning Digital Mental Healthcare with 18 publications, followed by Frontiers in Psychiatry and JMIR Mental Health. Analyses reflects that the top cited articles on Digital Mental healthcare are specifically directed on bringing out some of the key concerns of data privacy, emergency response, therapist competency and consent. Appropriate handling is pertinent to inculcate trust. The ethical concerns raised could be important guide for online mental health services.

    Keywords: Digital Mental Healthcare, Ethical dilemmas, bibliometric analysis, Online Psychotherapy and Counselling, Telemental health (TMH)

    Received: 26 Sep 2024; Accepted: 24 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Sharma, Wagani and Varghese. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Poonam Sharma, School of Social Sciences and Languages, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.