Stanford Jennifer Anne, Just Sandra Anna
Department of Psychiatry and Neurosciences, Campus Charité Mitte, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Psychologische Hochschule Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
JMIR Ment Health. 2025 Jul 7;12:e70321. doi: 10.2196/70321.
Older adults with mental illness face specific physical and psychosocial challenges and inequities, reflected in limited access to advanced technology. This digital divide is alarming as mental health interventions increasingly depend on both patients' and clinicians' access to technology. However, digitalized treatments also present opportunities to enhance accessibility, effectiveness, and equity across age groups.
This scoping review charted the state of quantitative research on digitalized treatment options for older people with mental illness. We focused specifically on how technology is integrated into existing nonpharmacological mental health interventions or leveraged to create new ones. We also summarized the state of the art on the feasibility and effectiveness of these interventions for various mental illnesses.
This review was conducted in compliance with the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines for systematic scoping reviews. A PubMed search conducted in April 2024 and updated in April 2025 identified 64 studies (15,644 participants; aged 40-97 years). Included studies were original quantitative studies or reviews of these studies looking into nonpharmacological treatments for older adults with a psychiatric diagnosis using any kind of technology.
The technologies examined ranged from web-based psychotherapy platforms and digital devices for daily challenges to robots for social interaction. Few studies (5/64, 7%) examined the newest advances in digital mental health, such as artificial intelligence or virtual reality. Most studies (37/64, 58%) evaluated dementia-related interventions using small, nonrandomized samples and uncontrolled designs.
The current state of the field, despite the promises of technology to reduce inequities between age groups, still largely excludes older adults from research on technological advances in mental health and their benefits. The field needs to overcome this selective bias and fight the "digital gray divide" in mental health.
患有精神疾病的老年人面临着特定的身体和心理社会挑战及不平等问题，这体现在他们获取先进技术的机会有限。随着心理健康干预越来越依赖患者和临床医生对技术的获取，这种数字鸿沟令人担忧。然而，数字化治疗也为提高各年龄组的可及性、有效性和公平性带来了机遇。
本范围综述梳理了针对患有精神疾病的老年人的数字化治疗方案的定量研究现状。我们特别关注技术如何融入现有的非药物心理健康干预措施或被用于创造新的干预措施。我们还总结了这些干预措施对各种精神疾病的可行性和有效性的研究现状。
本综述按照系统范围综述的PRISMA（系统评价和Meta分析的首选报告项目）指南进行。2024年4月进行的PubMed检索并于2025年4月更新，共识别出64项研究（15644名参与者；年龄在40 - 97岁之间）。纳入的研究为原始定量研究或对这些研究的综述，这些研究探讨了使用任何技术对患有精神疾病诊断的老年人进行非药物治疗。
所研究的技术范围从基于网络的心理治疗平台、应对日常挑战的数字设备到用于社交互动的机器人。很少有研究（64项中的5项, 7%）考察了数字心理健康的最新进展，如人工智能或虚拟现实。大多数研究（64项中的37项, 58%）使用小样本、非随机样本和无对照设计评估了与痴呆症相关的干预措施。
尽管技术有望减少年龄组之间的不平等，但该领域的现状在很大程度上仍将老年人排除在心理健康技术进步及其益处的研究之外。该领域需要克服这种选择性偏见，消除心理健康领域的“数字灰色鸿沟”。
