Structural Racism and Lessons Not Heard: A Rapid Review of the Telepsychiatry Literature During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency

Tashalee R. Brown, MD, PhD; Kevin Y. Xu, MD, MPH; Anne L. Glowinski, MD, MPE

Prim Care Companion CNS Disord 2023;25(6):23r03563

ABSTRACT

Objective: To assess the extent to which articles examining telepsychiatry after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic provided racial and sociodemographic characteristics for people receiving audiovisual (video) versus audio-only telepsychiatry.

Data Sources, Study Selection, and Data Extraction: We employed the keyword telepsychiatry and screened all peer-reviewed articles in PubMed published from March 1, 2020, until November 23, 2022, prior to the federal government’s announcement of the impending end to the COVID-19 public health emergency. We retrieved and reviewed the full-text articles of 553 results for potential inclusion, of which 266 were original research articles.

Results: We found that 106 of 553 articles had any mention of differences between audio-only and audiovisual telepsychiatry. Twenty-nine of 553 articles described potential socioeconomic differences in the distribution of people receiving audio-only versus audiovisual telepsychiatry, and 20 of 553 described potential racial/ethnic differences. Among research articles, most (213/266) did not differentiate between videoconferencing and audio-only/telephone-based telehealth services. A total of 4 research articles provided racial and sociodemographic characteristics of individuals who received audio-only versus audiovisual telepsychiatry services during the COVID-19 pandemic, all of which were conducted in relatively small regional samples that could not be generalized to the US as a whole.

Conclusions: Overall, this analysis underscores that empirical data are lacking on racial and sociodemographic distribution of audio-only versus audiovisual telepsychiatry services since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prim Care Companion CNS Disord 2023;25(6):23r03563

Author affiliations are listed at the end of this article.

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