E-mental health: Minding the gap and empowering consumers

Much of the e-mental health service innovation in Australia has originated within universities where researchers have not only developed online and mobile applications to deliver mental health services but have also carried out rigorous research to demonstrate their effectiveness. This development work is within the context of Australia�s high internet use. According to the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as many as 79% of households in Australia have internet access and 92% of these are connected by broadband (ABS: 2012) Moreover, most households access the internet every day (ABS: 2012). To their credit, successive federal governments have been quick to recognise the potential of e-mental health. As a consequence, the Department of Health and Ageing has partly or fully funded the ongoing delivery of a number of e-mental health services. A key driver here has been the evidence that these programs work and are cost-effective especially given consistent findings that only onethird of Australians receive mental health help from the conventional health system.