Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Electronic mental e-mental health offers an opportunity to overcome many challenges such as cost, accessibility, and the stigma associated with mental health, and most people with lived experiences of mental problems are in favor of using applications and websites to manage their mental health problems.
However, the use of these new technologies remains weak in the area of mental health and psychiatry. This study aimed to characterize the social representations associated with e-mental health by all actors to implement new technologies in the best possible way in the health system. A free-association task method was used. The corpus of text is divided into 2 themes, with technological and computing terms on one side and medical and public health terms on the other.
This study shows that there is a gap between the representations of users on e-mental health as a tool for improving their quality of life and those of health professionals except nurses that are more focused on the technological potential of these digital care tools. Developers, designers, clinicians, and users must be aware of the social representation of e-mental health conditions uses and intention of use.
Keywords: e-mental health, social representations, free association task, psychiatry, mental health, mental health service users, technology, digital health. Mental health care continues to face many challenges such as cost, accessibility, and the stigma associated with mental health. This results in inequalities and inadequacies in the treatment of many people with lived experiences of mental health problems [ 1 ].
The field of eHealth offers an opportunity to overcome these structural and personal barriers to seeking help [ 2 ]. Electronic mental health or digital mental health includes teleservice or telemedicine, interoperability repositories, shared medical records, mobile applications mHealth , e-learning, online information searches and sharing, and others.
