Background: A telehealth mental health programme was designed at the LivingLab of the Faculty of Medicine of the Universidad de Antioquia [University of Antioquia].
Objectives: To describe the development and operation of the programme and evaluate the satisfaction of the patients treated during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
Methods: Descriptive study that details the development of the programme. Data were extracted from medical records to describe the patients who were treated. A satisfaction scale was applied to a random sample and the data were summarised with descriptive statistics.
Results: In March 2020 and August 2021, 10,229 patients were treated, with 20,276 treated by telepsychology and 4,164 by psychiatry, 1,808 by telepsychiatry and 2,356 by tele-expertise, with a total of 6,312 visits. The most frequent diagnoses were depressive (36.8%), anxiety (12.0%), and psychotic (10.7%) disorders. Respondents were satisfied to the point that more than 93% would recommend it to another person.
Conclusions: The LivingLab telehealth mental health programme allowed for the care of patients with mental health problems and disorders in Antioquia during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and there was a high degree of satisfaction among the beneficiaries. Therefore it could be adopted in mental health care.
Keywords: COVID-19; Mental health; Pandemias; Pandemics; Patient satisfaction; Salud mental; Satisfacción del paciente; Telehealth; Telesalud.
Copyright © 2022 Asociación Colombiana de Psiquiatría. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.