Tom Van Daele

Thomas More Kempen · Department of Applied Psychology

The majority of mental health disorders remain untreated. Many limitations of traditional psychological interventions such as limited availability of evidence-based interventions and clinicians could potentially be overcome by providing Internet- and mobile-based psychological interventions (IMIs). This paper is a report of the Taskforce E-Health o...

Recomendaciones para pólizas y prácticas de telepsicoterapia y e-mental health en Europa y más allá La pandemia de COVID-19 ha traído consigo una gran necesidad de utilizar telepsicoterapia y otras intervenciones utilizando teorías y técnicas psicológicas para apoyar la salud mental y física. E-mental health presenta una amplia gama de oportunidade...

New technologies, such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), can be used as an add-on to exposure therapy for common anxiety disorders. Although the benefits of VR for exposure therapy have already been demonstrated extensively in research, AR applications are only just becoming widely available. Evidence for the added value and effec...

Current mental healthcare systems experience difficulties meeting the challenges of a growing population with elevated stress symptoms. Outpatient stress management interventions have already proven to be effective in routine care and recent technological advances now allow to expand such interventions, for example by adding a physiological compone...

Revisiting what happened during (or after) a traumatic event is an important part of the treatment process in trauma-focused cognitive therapy (TF-CT). However, clinicians may have difficulty helping patients to intentionally retrieve these memories in order to engage with their content. As such, clinical tools to support the access and delivery of...

In this scientific advisory report, which offers guidance to public health policy-makers, the Superior Health Council of Belgium provides recommendations of digital interventions and apps for mental health. Available in English, French and Dutch (https://www.health.belgium.be/en/report-9745-apps-mental-health). To be cited as SHC - Superior Health...

Editorial on the Research Topic Dissemination, implementation and uptake of digital and technological interventions in practice. The effectiveness of a wide range of digital interventions, like guided self-help interventions, has been well established for common mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety. In highly controlled research...

Digital health can enrich care in developed healthcare systems but is increasingly also being proposed as a valuable healthcare option in developing countries. While differences in culture, literacy and infrastructure can influence digital health design, acceptance and implementation, most theories and tools insufficiently take this into account. T...

La fobia específica es una enfermedad mental muy prevalente que se caracteriza por un miedo persistente y marcado hacia un objeto o situación específicos y la correspondiente evitación de este objeto o situación. La terapia de exposición, una técnica de terapia cognitivo-conductual (TCC), es el tratamiento de primera elección, y puede incluir la ex...

Introduction Internet-delivered psychotherapy is often considered to be a promising way to extend mental healthcare services around the world. Research findings that have emerged over the past two decades have strengthened this claim. However, very little is known about the usage of internet-delivered psychotherapy in real-life circumstances. Meth...

Digital innovations in mental health offer great potential, but present unique challenges. Using a consensus development panel approach, an expert, international, cross-disciplinary panel met to provide a framework to conceptualise digital mental health innovations, research into mechanisms and effectiveness and approaches for clinical implementati...

All over the world, measures were taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Social distancing not only had a strong influence on mental health, but also on the organization of care systems. It changed existing practices, as we had to rapidly move from face-to-face contact to remote contact with patients. These changes have prompted research into the...

Phobic individuals are often reluctant to engage in exposure in vivo (IVE). We examined whether providing exposure in virtual reality (VRE) can increase the acceptability. In Study 1, we provided 186 fearful participants with (hypothetical) VRE and IVE treatment offers and examined their willingness to engage in treatment, estimated success, negati...

The overall objectives of this study are to describe the state of the art and to provide an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the use of extended reality (XR) technologies in the healthcare and education sectors. The study employs a mixed-methods approach based on desk research, surveys, interviews, case studies and sectoral workshops....

Executive Summary

Exposure therapy is an effective treatment for specific phobia that could be further enhanced through Augmented Reality, a novel technology that can facilitate implementation of gradual exposure and promote treatment acceptability. Effective exposure interventions require stimuli evoking high levels of anxiety. Therefore, it is important to ascerta...

Objective An exponential implementation of remote mental health care has been observed, but little data is available on experiences and barriers of remote health from a patient’s perspective. This study investigated experiences associated with several forms of remote consultations (both telephone and online video) for mental health care during the...

Background There is a great evidence base today for the effectiveness of e-mental health, or the use of technology in mental healthcare. However, large-scale implementation in mental healthcare organisations is lacking, especially in inpatient specialized mental healthcare settings. Aim The current study aimed to gain insights into the factors tha...

In 2015, Apple launched an open-source software framework called ResearchKit. ResearchKit provides an infrastructure for conducting remote, smartphone-based research trials through the means of Apple's App Store. Such trials may have several advantages over conventional trial methods including the removal of geographic barriers, frequent assessment...

Introduction While online consultations have shown promise to be a means for the effective delivery of high-quality mental healthcare and the first implementations of these digital therapeutic contacts go back nearly two decades, uptake has remained limited over the years. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically altered this relative stands...

Background: Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent in mental health problems. The lives of people suffering from an anxiety disorder can be severely impaired. Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET) is an effective treatment, which immerses patients in a controlled Virtual Environment (VE). This creates the opportunity to confront feared stimuli a...

Nele De Witte, Lise Haddouk, Benoît Schneider et Tom Van Daele mettent ensuite en articulation les travaux conduits au sein du groupe E-santé de l’efpa – qui ont abouti à la formulation de vingt-cinq recommandations proposées aux psychothérapeutes, aux organismes et aux développeurs – et les contributions de la ffpp pour élaborer un cadre minimal d...

La troisième partie s’attache à prendre en compte la façon dont la crise du Covid‑19 a représenté un tournant dans les pratiques de télépsychologie. En réalité, il est encore tôt pour évaluer dans la durée les réels effets de ce tournant. Mais cette crise a indiscutablement représenté une étape majeure dans la mesure où elle a suscité, du fait de l...

The primary purpose of this article is to review the potential therapeutic value of freely available VR content as an addition to the practitioners ‘toolkit’. Research has shown that virtual reality (VR) may be useful to extend existing guided imagery-based practices found in traditional mental health therapy. However, the use of VR technology with...

Phobic individuals are often reluctant to engage in exposure in vivo (IVE). We examined whether providing exposure in virtual reality (VRE) can increase the acceptability. In Study 1, we provided 186 fearful participants with (hypothetical) VRE and IVE treatment offers and examined their willingness to engage in treatment, estimated success, negati...

Background: Research increasingly shows how selective and targeted use of technology within care and welfare can have several advantages including improved quality of care and active user involvement. Purpose: The current overview of reviews aims to summarize the research on the effectiveness of technology for mental health and wellbeing. The goal...

Human factors research is still in its infancy in healthcare and other fields. Yet it has the potential to allow organisations and living labs to assess and improve innovation quality, while closely involving potential end users. "Human factors" involve a scientific focus on the interaction between individuals and systems with the goal of improving...

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken the mental health system by surprise, with the state of lockdown forcing businesses to close their doors, including many mental health services. This has driven many psychotherapists and other mental health professionals towards telepsychotherapy, relying on online consultations to provide continuity of care. However...

Virtual reality is increasingly recognized as a powerful method for clinical interventions in the mental health field, but has yet to achieve mainstream adoption in routine mental healthcare settings. A similar, yet slightly different technology, immersive 360° videos might have the potential to cover this gap, by requiring both lower costs and les...

Background Telepsychology is increasingly being implemented in mental health care. We conducted a scoping review on the best available research evidence regarding availability, efficacy and clinical utility of telepsychology in DBT. The review was performed using PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Our aim was to help DBT-therapists make empirically supported d...

E-mental health (eMH) encompasses the use of digital technologies to deliver, support, or enhance mental health services. Despite the growing evidence for the effectiveness of eMH interventions, the process of implementation of eMH solutions in healthcare remains slow throughout Europe. To address this issue, the e-Mental Health Innovation and Tran...

Digital health applications and interactive technologies increasingly allow organisations to transcend national boundaries and expand the provision of tools and services to communities across the world. Making the transfer beyond the context in which applications were originally conceptualized is challenging, as these have to be tailored towards lo...

Introduction While the general uptake of e-mental health interventions remained low over the past years, physical distancing and lockdown measures relating to the COVID-19 pandemic created a need and demand for online consultations in only a matter of weeks. Objective This study investigates the uptake of online consultations provided by mental he...

E-mental health, or the use of technology in mental healthcare, has been the focus of research for over two decades. Over that period, the evidence-base for the potential of technology to improve psychotherapeutic practice has grown steadily. This sharply contrasts with the actual use of e-mental health by psychotherapists, which has remained limit...

The public health outbreak of the COVID-19 virus has hit all aspects of life as we know it. We found ourselves trying to solve several concurrent crises that have afflicted us. The European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations (EFPA) launched the Psychologists’ Support Hub to share resources among its members and beyond and promote the continu...

BACKGROUND While the general uptake of e-mental health interventions remained low over the past years, physical distancing and quarantine measures relating to the COVID-19 pandemic created a need and demand for online consultations and telepsychology in only a matter of weeks. OBJECTIVE This study investigates the uptake of online consultations pr...

This paper is now published in Internet Interventions: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.invent.2021.100405

Over the past years, mobile health (mHealth) applications and specifically wearables have become able and available to collect data of increasing quality of relevance for mental health. Despite the large potential of wearable technology, mental healthcare professionals are currently lacking tools and knowledge to properly implement and make use of...

The evidence base for the use of immersive technologies, such as Virtual Reality (VR), for the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is compelling. Despite promising results wide spread use and adoption of this technology within routine clinical practice remains limited. A lack of detailed technical guidelines might be one of the reaso...

When a new service or product is introduced, local context always has to be taken into consideration, as requirements and preferences might vary across regions. Similarly, the concrete setup of living lab research might vary depending on where and with whom it takes place. Previous research suggests that cultural characteristics and individual diff...

Therapeuten stonden in het verleden terughoudend tegenover technologie in therapie. Velen bleven er ver van weg en maakten gebruik van beproefde, klassieke methodes. De COVID-19-pandemie dwong hen echter plots om hun cliënten massaal online van hulp te voorzien, vaak door middel van beeldbellen. De verwachting leeft dat deze plotse digitalisering v...

Even though eMH solutions have an important potential to reduce waiting lists and costs for mental health care, Belgium only shows initial levels of awareness of eMH products and services in various stakeholder groups. eMH-related initiatives and projects are evolving with support from federal and regional government, and higher education is starti...

According to the World Health Organization, the term ”e-health” describes a broad group of activities and services that employ differing computer applications and electronic means to deliver health-related information, resources, and services. In general e-health tools have the potential to improvediagnosis, treatment, monitoring and management of...

This consensus statement from the different members of the EFPA project group on E-health aims to provide general rules of thumb concerning the dissemination in and use of digital psychological interventions in practice.

In the current study, we examined the role of expectancy violation and retrospective reasoning about the absence of feared outcomes in virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET). Participants fearful of public speaking were asked to give speeches in virtual reality. We asked each participant individually to report their expectancies about feared outco...

Cross-border collaboration is an important part of living lab research, as circumstances and requirements for services and products can vary greatly depending on the region in which they are introduced. While cross-cultural differences can be of interest for these studies, they can also be confounding factors for data collection and analysis. Dissi...

In de ggz wordt steeds sterker ingezet op online interventies, vaak als aanvulling op de klassieke face-to-face-therapie. Hoe sterk is de evidentie dat blended therapie ook echt tot betere zorg leidt, en hoe krijgt blended therapie vorm in de praktijk?

Chronic illnesses cause considerable burden in quality of life, often leading to physical, psychological and social dysfunctioning of the sufferers and their family. There is a growing need for flexible provision of home-based psychological services to increase reach even for traditionally underserved chronic illness sufferer populations. Digital i...

This study sets out to extend current knowledge of parenting stress and fear of hypoglycemia (FoH) in parents of children with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). We examined if the relationship between parental and children’s FoH and metabolic control, as reflected by HbA1c, is mediated by parenting stress. A total of 63 parents and children with T1D...

Although constructivist theories have shown learning is accelerated by involvement and meaningful lecturer–student and student–student interaction, these ingredients are mostly absent from large attendance lectures. A number of studies have already focused on more active ways of learning in large lecture classrooms, most often by using student resp...

There is a longstanding debate whether allowing safety-seeking behaviors (SSBs) during cognitive-behavioral treatment hampers or facilitates the reduction of fear. In this meta-analysis, we evaluate the impact of SSBs on exposure-based fear reduction interventions. After filtering 409 journal articles, 23 studies were included for systematic review...

Background Reduced autobiographical memory specificity (rAMS) is related to a range of psychopathological disorders such as depression, PTSD, and eating disorders. rAMS is considered a predictor of an unfavorable course of pathology. Recently, rAMS was also found in chronic pain. In the present study, we examined whether patients with medically une...

Mobiele toepassingen zoals smartphoneapplicaties doen geleidelijk hun intrede in de (geestelijke) gezondheidszorg. De opzet van zulke ‘apps’ dient momenteel vaak preventieve doeleinden. Zo laten ze het brede publiek bijvoorbeeld toe om vlot zelfrapportagevragenlijsten in te vullen, of informatie of hulp op maat te krijgen op de momenten waarop ze h...

Mobile technology such as smartphone applications is gradually making its entry into health care. At the moment, the purpose of these 'apps' is often prevention. For instance, they allow the general public to quickly and easily fill in self-report questionnaires, or access information or tailor-made help at the moment it is actually needed. This sp...

AimTo explore attitudes and confidence in professional competence of home nurses concerning depression and to evaluate the capacity of a minimal intervention in helping home nurses to detect depression in patients and their family caregivers.Background Long-term ill patients have an elevated risk to develop comorbid depression, as do their family c...

Geestelijke gezondheid krijgt in toenemende mate aandacht in het beleid van de gezondheidszorg. Dat is positief, want een aanzienlijk aantal personen kampt met psychische problemen en het leidt geen twijfel dat geestelijke gezondheid voor iedereen van essentieel belang is. Mede door de verhoogde belangstelling en de toegenomen zorgvraag krijgt de g...

Het komende decennium verwacht Vlaanderen een sterke toename van het aantal ouderen: de groep 65-plussers zal met zowat 20 procent groeien tot 1,35 miljoen. Deels hierdoor is er het afgelopen decennium ook een gestage stijging merkbaar van het aantal personen met chronische ziektes zoals lage rugproblemen, allergieën, hoge bloeddruk, artrose en nek...

This study investigated whether overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM) predicts the course of symptoms of depression and anxiety in a community sample, after 5, 6, 12 and 18 months. Participants (N = 156) completed the Autobiographical Memory Test and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (DASS-21) at baseline and were subsequently reassessed...

This study set out to determine the effectiveness of a 6-week cognitive-behavioral stress reduction course for groups. Two groups (intervention group N=47; matched control group N=47) completed questionnaires on stress, depression, anxiety, worrying, and stress management skills pre and post-intervention, at 6 months and at 1 year follow-up. Result...

Implementation is an emerging research topic in the field of health promotion. Most of the implementation research adheres to one of two paradigms: implementing interventions with maximum fidelity or designing interventions that are responsive to the needs of a local community. While fidelity and adaptation are often considered as contradictory, th...

Bespreking van Merry SN, Stasiak K, Shepherd M, et al. The effectiveness of SPARX, a computerised self help intervention for adolescents seeking help for depression: randomised controlled non-inferiority trial. BMJ 2012;344;e2598.

This paper aims to provide a review of the effectiveness of psychoeducation as a method for preventing stress, anxiety and depression. Major databases were searched using predefined keywords. Main characteristics of reviewed articles are presented in overviews that are grouped according to the intervention targets. For each group, characteristics a...

The aim of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the effectiveness of psychoeducational interventions in reducing stress and to gain more insight in determining features moderating the magnitude of effects. Relevant studies were selected from 1990 to 2010 and were included according to predetermined criteria. For each study, the standardized mean diff...

Background and objectives: Research has shown that overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM) is a valid predictor for the course of depression. It is not known, however, whether OGM also moderates information uptake and consolidation in a psychoeducation program to prevent stress, anxiety and depression. The present study was designed to investiga...

Background/Objectives: It is widely acknowledged that chronic stress is a major health burden and seriously compromises well-being. Within the widely accepted concept of stepped care, there is a need for preventive approaches at the level of primary care. The aim of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the effectiveness of psychoeducational intervent...