How can technology help to better "engage" mental health clients?

In the realm of mental health care, do you know of a provider, organization or hospital that is talking about, their role in client engagement?  And what does this mean?

mHealth Summit in DC, December 2013

For me, engaging my client means motivating her to embrace her recovery by giving her multiple ways to engage with me and with her own treatment.  Basically, there should be as few barriers to help as possible, and as many opportunities to engage in treatment as possible. And, if her health does not improve, it's because I haven't engaged her enough by giving her options that work for her.

Unfortunately, holding mental health practitioners and the organizations they work for responsible for the mental health outcomes of their clients doesn't happen enough.  We usually provide one-dimensional care:  face-to-face counseling paired with optional medication management from a doctor.  Is this really enough?

This topic caught my eye when reading about the upcoming mHealth Summit in December:

mHealth's Role in Patient Engagement 

To comply with accountable care requirements and qualify for Meaningful Use incentive payments, providers must engage patients in their own health. Increasingly, hospitals, health systems and physician practices are tapping into mHealth solutions to achieve that goal. From mobile devices and apps to online portals and other emerging technologies, these powerful tools can connect patients with providers and their own personal health data to ensure high-quality, collaborative care before, during and after discharge.  And while some patients are highly motivated to track and manage their own health, reaching patients who need the most help can be tough.  

Tools to connect providers with their clients and clients with their own personal health data?  Does mental health need this?  If this is "patient engagement," yes, we need it!  

And what could these tools be?

•  Apps that help us track our daily moods and fluctuations, to show clients how they are improving over time (and to catch big downward spirals while they are happening).  
• An online personalized recovery toolkit, adapting the tools we already know and use in the mental health field including the Wellness Recovery Action Plan, Safety Planning, affirmations for positive change, cognitive coaching, goal-setting and any other tool we want to use, adapted to an online environment, handy at the fingertips of our clients.  
• A text message pushed out daily to our clients, asking how they are feeling on a scale of one to ten.  
• Positive messaging to our clients to provide encouragement and inspiration, or to remind them of their goals, on social media or text messaging. 

But these tools must not stop with an app in our client's pockets!  All these tools need to be connected to the team of family, friends and professionals supporting the client's recovery.  These tools must be used to enhance our relationship with our clients.

And evidence from text-based mental health programs is already teaching us that people say and do things differently in these spaces.  Disclosures of suicidality or past sexual abuse may happen first in the text-based environment.  And people who would not otherwise engage in treatment at all, reach out in online and text-based mediums.  These include teens and other people who feel stigma asking for help or have trouble communicating verbally.

It is critical that mental health adopts an assertive "patient engagement" stance to save lives and improve the lives of many more. One way to better engage our clients, especially those who are hard to engage, is to use mobile and online technologies to offer multiple channels of support in clinical care.