Meeting Patients Where They Are: Access to Effective Psychotherapy

Thank you to Mark Rapaport, Editor of Focus, for the opportunity to serve as guest editor of this issue, which focuses on improving access to psychotherapy through technology. Psychotherapy has made significant progress in demonstrating many models that show efficacy for the treatment of mental health issues, but implementation of these interventions is often restricted to specialty mental health settings. As a result, the impact of psychotherapy on the population that requires treatment has been less than optimal. As the field has learned more about how psychotherapy works, many mental health professionals and technology experts have worked to improve access to effective psychotherapy, with varying degrees of success. These advances have included modifications to the frequency or length of sessions (as in brief models of care or massed treatment models) and to the mode of therapy (telehealth or interactive Web-based interventions, bibliotherapy, or providers who are peers or non–mental health providers). As a treatment researcher and developer whose research focuses on mechanisms of change in psychotherapy and other treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder, I believe that these advances in implementation of effective psychotherapy through technology promise to move these options out of specialty mental health and into the hands of the people who need patient-centered, effective psychotherapy and treatment delivered as efficiently as possible. As described more fully in the introductory review and in the articles that follow, this issue discusses some of the most promising developments in implementation of psychotherapy through technology. Thank you to all of the contributors to this issue and to all of its readers.