Theme lead: Anke Ehlers
► About the theme
One in five adults suffer from mental health problems that interfere with their social and occupational functioning and increase the risk of premature death. There have been major advances in the development of effective psychological treatments. However, limited therapist availability, geographical constraints, and patients’ schedules mean that only a small proportion of patients currently benefit from these treatments.
The Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and Oxford University partnership is one of the most powerful collaborations in psychological therapy innovation for mental health problems worldwide.
We have made fundamental contributions to the understanding of anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, recurrent depression, sleep disorders, psychosis, chronic fatigue and medically unexplained symptoms, and have developed leading treatments for these conditions.
► What are our aims?
- To capitalise on the digital revolution
- Further refine psychological treatments
- Develop delivery systems that vastly increase their scope for treating mental health problems
► How are we achieving this?
- Building a digital platform for delivering psychological therapies via the internet
- Developing and piloting novel internet implementations of a range of psychological therapies that have been shown to be effective when delivered as face-to-face interventions
- Conducting randomised controlled trials of new treatments, identifying mediators and moderators of treatment response using the large databases and further enhancing the effectiveness of the treatments by refining their content
- Developing internet-based therapist training to support dissemination of the programmes
- Rolling out the internet-delivered therapies in the NHS and evaluating their effectiveness in routine clinical care
- Using the results to further refine the treatments