Digital Mental Health Interventions in Psychiatric Nursing: Applications in Assessment, Care Delivery, and Patient Support

A BSTRACT Mental health nursing faces escalating challenges, including global workforce shortages, rising patient acuity, stigma-related barriers, and limited capacity for continuous monitoring and support. Digital mental health interventions – encompassing telepsychiatry, mHealth applications, digital therapeutics, and remote patient monitoring – offer potential to extend and enhance psychiatric nursing practice. This narrative review examines the evidence for these interventions in psychiatric nursing contexts, drawing on a structured literature search of PubMed/MEDLINE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, and the Cochrane Library for publications from 2015 to 2024. Evidence generally supports the effectiveness of nurse-supported digital interventions; however, most studies are of low to moderate quality, characterized by significant heterogeneity, short follow-up durations, and variable outcome measures. Strong clinical conclusions from individual trials should be contextualized against these methodological limitations. In India, where the mental health treatment gap exceeds 80% and psychiatric workforce shortages are severe, digital mental health interventions offer particular promise, though culturally adapted and linguistically accessible platforms remain insufficient. Key implementation challenges include digital literacy barriers, therapeutic relationship concerns in virtual settings, privacy considerations, equity implications, and ethical boundaries. Psychiatric nurses must approach digital technologies as enhancements to – not replacements for – the therapeutic relationship and holistic, person-centered care.