Potential pitfalls and lessons learned

Mental health and alcohol/other drug use problems dominate the top 10 causes of disease burden in young people globally and lead to a significant lifetime burden. Services responding to this burden are beyond the capacity of their financial and human resources. Digital therapeutics hold much potential in responding to this challenge, with rapid advancements occurring in the last decade. So, what have we learned? This chapter outlines the major lessons of the past decade of research and implementation of digital therapeutics in mental health and addiction settings. Increased funding and rapid expansion of different digital tools and strategies make these therapeutics immediately available to the community any time of the day or night. Yet, uptake and engagement are variable, no clear models exist for their integration into clinical care, and service users significantly underutilize digital therapeutics in their clinical practice. The challenges for the next decade are to build capacity and connectivity for digital therapeutics across clinical services, to access evidence-based, world-class care. This chapter provides some suggestions and strategies with which to achieve this.