A Practitioner’s Guide to Telemental Health How to Conduct Legal, Ethical, and Evidence-Based Telepractice

Now in its second edition, A Practitioner's Guide to Telemental Health is significantly updated with coverage of current best practices, evidence-based recommendations, and attention to nuanced refinements of telemental health in the face of recent accelerated growth in the field, due in part to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Telemental health, or TMH, has become integral to nearly all aspects of behavioral health service, including research and delivery of treatment, assessment, psychoeducation, training, supervision, and consultation. This has removed significant barriers to care access for many underserved groups; however, it also means that the field overall must build its capacity to provide TMH.

This book is for seasoned clinicians as well as new providers preparing to enter the mental and behavioral health care professions. Its chapters provide a guide for increasing TMH competencies, which require keeping up-to-date with the scientific evidence base and ongoing collegial discussion with informed leaders in the clinical, ethical, and legal realms.

Readers will benefit from the research presented, as well as the description of practical steps they can take to ensure they are providing rewarding, safe, and quality TMH care for their patients.

David D. Luxton, PhD, MS, is an affiliate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, and the founder of Luxton Labs LLC and Wayfarer Records LLC. Dr. Luxton's research and writing focus on the development and evaluation of innovative technologies in healthcare with specializations in artificial intelligence and ethics, telehealth, military and veterans’ health, and forensic psychology. He’s a licensed clinical psychologist and served in the United States Air Force.

Eve-Lynn Nelson, PhD, LP, FATA, is a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of Kansas. Securing over $40 million in federal funds over her career, Dr. Nelson’s research focuses on the evaluation of evidence-supported, patient-centered approaches in low-resource communities, including the evaluation of the array of telehealth technologies to deliver clinical and educational programming. She pioneered school-based telebehavioral health with her multi-state Telehealth ROCKS initiative (www.telehealthrocks.org) extending telebehavioral health best practices and social services support to set children up for success in the classroom and in life.

Marlene M. Maheu, PhD, is a telehealth consultant, author, publisher, trainer, and the founder of Telehealth.org, LLC. She has served on a dozen professional association committees and task forces related to telemental health, written five telehealth textbooks, 50+ book chapters, and journal articles, and trained more than 66,000 professionals in telehealth since 1994. She was the lead author of the first published competencies for telemental health and now serves as an expert witness in telehealth-related legal cases. Her 55 telehealth newsletters are read by more than 5,000,000 professionals annually. She founded the non-profit Coalition for Technology in Behavioral Science (ctibs.org) and its journal, the Journal for Technology in Behavioral Science.

Foreword
Gerald P. Koocher
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Telemental Health Moves from the Margins Into the Mainstream
Chapter 1. Concepts, Principles, and Benefits of Telemental Health
Chapter 2. Overview of Telemental Health Technologies
Chapter 3. Ethical, Legal, and Risk Management Considerations
Chapter 4. Establishing a Telemental Health Practice
Chapter 5. Safety and Emergency Planning and Management
Chapter 6. Providing Direct Clinical Care
Chapter 7. Conducting Psychological Assessments
Chapter 8. Telesupervision and Training in Telepractice
Chapter 9. Ethical Telepractice With Historically Underserved Populations
Chapter 10. Optimizing Practitioner Skills and Resilience
Chapter 11. Conclusion: A Call to Action and Telemental Health Leadership
References
Index
About the Authors