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This book is designed as a handbook for professionals. It systematically describes how to expand the reach and quality of mental health services by integrating technology into everyday practice, and uses case examples for demonstration. It acquaints mental health professionals and administrators with information from think tanks, research labs, legal precedent, professionals and administrators in the field. It provides the reader with the nuts and bolts of how and when to consider using the new, rapidly proliferating specialized technologies for behavioral and mental health. In addition to answering "how-to" questions, the use of psychotechnologies calls for thoughtful weighing of the many issues involved in integrating technology into the delivery of care to people with social or emotional problems. Accordingly, we discuss services available to practitioners today, as well as visionary applications of tomorrow.

Internet-wired offices are already using e-mail, online chat groups, web pages, auto-responders, search engines, electronic databases, webcasts, webinars, video-conferencing and so much more! The application of these technologies offer new possibilities and unprecedented dilemmas for the professional. Questions often abound, but clear answers are difficult to find, until now. 

In this reader-friendly handbook, the broad experience of the authors combine into a singular direction to carefully guide the reader through ethical and legal solutions for how and when to expand the reach and functionality of using new technologies in real life circumstances. The Mental Health Professional and the New Technologies includes illustrative examples of how the psychotechnologies are successful used by health care practitioners from around the globe in both small and large-scale settings.

Using this practical guide, health care professionals can learn how to:

• Understand key terminology

• Choose the best equipment to meet specific programmatic needs, from email, chat rooms, and other text-based environments, to the do's and don'ts of building professional Websites, incorporating audio and video-conferencing into solo, group and hospital or other organizational practice, finding research-based computer-aided assessment tools that meet scientific rigor rather than simply responding to mass market appeal, sampling computer-aided psychotherapy through proven software and devices that can easily be distributed to patients for at-home monitoring.

• Makes sense of the computerization of medical records including issues such as privacy, confidentiality, security and data integrity.

• Meet legal and regulatory issues, including successful risk management policies

• Consider ethical requirements for practice as well as develop options drawn from the author's "best practice model" for assessing and treating patients at a distance, and how to manage emergencies while offering remote care.

• Develop referrals, offer client education and design comprehensive patient consent forms ready for legal review

• Delivering direct patient care via test-based environments, audio and video modalities, or any combination of thereof

• Reimbursement, claims submission and payment processes, advocacy and lobbying

• Envision the future of technology based health care delivery and how to prepare for it, both nationally and globally
  

• Access online resources of relevant web sites, email lists, and publications to keep informed over time.