Telehealth Successful for Patients With Bipolar Disorder, PTSD

Jürgen Unützer, MD, MPH, MA, professor and Chair, Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences; Founder, AIMS Center, University of Washington, Seattle, and John Fortney, PhD, Director, Division of Population Health; Professor, Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Univeristy of Washington, discuss their 5 year study recently published in JAMA Psychiatry that found telepsychiatry in rural, federally qualified health centers to be successful for patients with bipolar disorder or PTSD.

“The results of our trial showed that if you give access to high-quality care for patients who are underserved, they improve their quality of life,” says lead researcher Dr John Fortney.

This video and transcript were originially created and published by the University of Washington School of Pharmacy.

Read the transcript: 

Dr. Jürgen Unützer [Yur-gun Own-Its-Ur]
Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine

:00
“I think both the timing and the impact of this trial are really, really important. We're at a time now where almost everybody has sort of come to realize what a huge burden untreated mental illness and addiction problems have – not just on our society in general, but almost every family has been affected by these problems in one way or another. And, the vast majority of Americans have very, very little access to good care. This trial showed us that we have now two approaches where we can use technology to make almost anybody anywhere in the United States have access to good care.”

:42
“I think telepsychiatry works – in this case, it looks like it works just about as well as if the patient had come in-person and traveled many, many hours by car to be seen by that same psychiatrist in an urban clinic. In fact, that might work even better, because when the patient from a rural area takes a trip a couple of hours to see a psychiatrist in an urban area, that's a one-time encounter. In this case, what we did is we provided the care right in the clinic where the patient is in their home environment, in their community, with a doctor that can help support some of the ongoing care.” 

1:20
“There are still some challenges. So, we have a tremendous workforce shortage and behavioral health in general – so we don't have enough psychiatrists and psychologists and clinical social workers and counselors for all the people who really need care. What this approach does is it helps distribute the available workforce a little bit more fairly. So, people who don't have access in rural or otherwise underserved areas all of a sudden can see a psychiatrist or psychologist.”
1:48

Dr. John Fortney
Professor of Psychiatry, University of Washington School of Medicine

1:49
“Patients in both groups improved dramatically, but no difference between the groups. And importantly, there were no difference in outcomes with regard to age, gender, race or ethnicity. So, both approaches to treating these patients addressed health disparities.”

2:06
“The pandemic created an opportunity for widespread adoption of this, which allowed both providers and patients to experience virtual care and to see the benefits for themselves.”

2:20
“What I hope is that telepsychiatry can be used to provide access to, better access to patients who are underserved now – because I think the results of our trial showed that if you give access to high quality care for patients who are underserved, they have in their outcomes and the quality of life.”