Online symptom checkers are a way to address patient concerns and potentially offload a burdened healthcare system. However, safety outcomes of self-triage are unknown, so we reviewed triage recommendations and outcomes of our institution's depression symptom checker.
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Concludes that there is little uptake of psychological interventions for depression. Strategies currently in development that could change this include single session interventions and task sharing which involves using lay counsellors to deliver the intervention. Digital interventions could improve access to treatment and have shown some positive outcomes.
The review showed that robust evidence for the effectiveness of iCBT as an add-on to TAU is still limited, with results not necessarily generalisable to people from different backgrounds based on age, gender, education, and mental healthcare settings. Clearly more research is needed, as remotely delivered, self-guided iCBT has the promise to increase accessibility and be more cost-effective.