A review into e-health services and therapies: potential for virtual therapeutic communities - supporting people with severe personality disorder

E-health has expanded hugely over the last fifteen years and continues to evolve, providing greater benefits for patients, health care professionals, and providers alike. The technologies that support these systems have become increasingly more sophisticated and have progressed significantly from standard databases, used for patient records, to highly advanced Virtual Reality (VR) systems for the treatment of complex mental health illnesses. The scope of this chapter is to initially explore e health, particularly in relation to technologies supporting the treatment and management of wellbeing in mental health. It then provides a case study of how technology in e-health can lend itself to an application that could support and maintain the wellbeing of people with a severe mental illness. The case study uses Borderline Personality Disorder as an example, but could be applicable in many other areas, including depression, anxiety, addiction, and PTSD. This type of application demonstrates how e-health can empower the individuals using it but also potentially reduce the impact upon health care providers and services.