Here is a sneak peek into Chapter 12 of our new book Digital Therapeutics for Mental Health and Addiction: The State of the Science and Vision for the Future (Elsevier Link):

Cultural adaptations of digital therapeutics

John A. Naslund (a), Jessica Spagnolo (b,c)

(a) Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, (b) Département des sciences de la santé communautaire, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada, (c) Centre de recherche Charles-Le Moyne (CR-CLM), Campus de Longueuil, Université de Sherbrooke, QC, Canada

Digital therapeutics, consisting of digitally enabled interventions for mental health or substance use disorders, hold promise for expanding the access to evidence-based treatments for mental disorders globally. The success of digital therapeutics will require careful adaptations of the digital platforms and intervention content in order to meet the needs of different population groups, and specifically accounting for diverse cultures, languages, and contexts. A growing body of evidence supports the effectiveness of cultural adaptation of psychological treatments for mental disorders, though less has been reported on the cultural adaptations to digital interventions. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to introduce the topic of cultural adaptation of digital therapeutics. Specifically, this chapter presents a summary of widely used frameworks for guiding cultural adaptation of evidence-based psychological interventions, followed by recent evidence of cultural adaptation of digital therapeutics, as well as recommendations for advancing the field. As health systems increasingly rely on digital technologies to support mental health care delivery, there will be an urgent need to leverage these digital interventions to meet the needs of diverse cultural groups and to ensure equity of access to quality mental health services.