The fourth and last French Emen conference "E-mental health (eMH): Training of Stakeholders & Evaluation of Tools" that took place at the Ministry for Solidarity and Health in Paris on the 6th of March 2020 gathered 150 people: health care professionals and peer support workers, researchers and academics, nonprofit actors, public personalities, mental health users, private sector from France, Europe or Canada.
Indeed, the event brought together the main actors of mental health and digital technologies in order to underline the eMH sector’s challenges and perspectives. The interventions of Laura Létourneau, ministerial delegate for digital health, Marianne Perreau-Saussine, ministerial delegation for mental health and psychiatry, or then again, of Dan Chisholm, head of mental health program at WHO Europe, allowed to clarify the French strategy and the international approach of this multidisciplinary subject putting together technics, ethics, confidentiality, financing, interoperability, education and so on.
All guided by the willingness to exchange and learn from each other around eMH, a general framework about the topic at a national and international level was given during the morning as the rest of the day was dedicated to the stakeholders training's current challenges, objectives, and perspectives - and the evaluation of e-mental health tools through the researches and user expectations.
Aware that the eMH topic is at the beginning of its democratization and especially in France where we can observe few training programs for health care professional or future professional. Blended therapy is however, crucial to be developed as it develops the access to cure for users far from mental health center services as well as decrease the mental barriers that some users can feel during face to face psychotherapy.
The Emen project will continue working under those specific questions during its phase of capitalization from June 2020 to December 2021 providing a toolkit and trainings.
