(Press-News.org)
A new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that mental health visits for patients with depression from high-wealth neighborhoods in Maryland were significantly more likely to happen via telehealth compared to patients with depression from low-wealth neighborhoods in Maryland from mid-2021 through mid-2024.
Telehealth visits by phone or web-based teleconferencing became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic after in-person health care options were scaled back and telehealth restrictions relaxed. The researchers investigated how mental health care visits changed from before and over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For their study, the researchers analyzed deidentified Johns Hopkins Health System electronic health records from mid-2016 to mid-2024 for patients diagnosed with depression. The researchers then categorized patients by the average neighborhood wealth using a measure called the Area Deprivation Index. The tool captures overall socioeconomic deprivation at the Census-block-group level based on factors including income, education, employment, and housing quality. For their study, the researchers compared patients from the highest and lowest quartiles of deprivation ratings.
From mid-2016 to mid-2019, the study found only a few dozen patients in the study cohort had telehealth visits. During the pandemic, the percentage of visits conducted via telehealth peaked in mid-2020 and continued to account for a substantial portion of mental health care through the end of the study period in mid-2024: From mid-2021 to mid-2024, 65% of mental health care visits in psychiatry and 24% of mental health visits in primary care were conducted via telehealth.
The study was published online February 14 in PNAS Nexus.
“Telehealth for mental health may reduce barriers to accessing care for some, but our findings suggest that telehealth may not be improving access to care for all patients, especially those living in low-wealth/high-deprivation areas,” says study lead author Catherine Ettman, PhD, an assistant professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health Policy and Management.
The authors note that telehealth visits, particularly video telehealth, typically require a personal computer, high bandwidth internet access, significant privacy, and a modest amount of technical knowledge.
For their telehealth analysis, the researchers used electronic health records from 132,275 visits for 29,608 patients with depression getting mental health treatment in primary care and 172,080 visits for 7,577 patients with depression getting mental health treatment in psychiatry from July 2020 through June 2024. About two-thirds of the patients were female.
The study found that from mid-2021—when Maryland lifted many COVID restrictions—to mid-2024, the odds of telehealth use relative to in-person visits were significantly higher for patients from high-wealth/low-deprivation neighborhoods compared to those from low-wealth/high-deprivation neighborhoods—about 1.62 times higher for primary care visits and 1.67 times higher for psychiatry department visits.
The researchers also examined overall visits—both telehealth and in-person—by patients with depression from mid-2016 to mid-2024. The cohort included 42,640 patients over 270,754 visits in primary care and 12,846 patients over 336,918 visits in psychiatry.
During the pre-pandemic period from mid-2016 to mid-2019, the rate of mental health care visits in psychiatry increased in both groups but rose more quickly among patients from high-wealth/low-deprivation areas compared to low-wealth/high-deprivation areas. After Maryland lifted its COVID emergency restrictions in July 2021, the rates of telehealth visits fell for both groups, with the low-wealth/high-deprivation patients returning to pre-pandemic levels and the high-wealth/low-deprivation patients remaining at levels above pre-pandemic levels.
The authors note that the findings may not be generalizable to all health systems or places.
“It is important to consider how telehealth may improve access to care and what we can learn from the groups it has helped most so that we can adjust and support patients who may need more mental health care services,” says Ettman.
“Trends in Mental Health Care and Telehealth Use Across Area Deprivation: An Analysis of Electronic Health Records from 2016-2024” was co-authored by Catherine Ettman, Grace Ringlein, Priya Dohlman, Jason Straub, Carly Lupton Brantner, Elizabeth Chin, Sazal Sthapit, Elena Badillo Goicoechea, Ramin Mojtabai, Michael Albert, Stanislav Spivak, Theodore Iwashyna, Fernando Goes, Elizabeth Stuart, and Peter Zandi.
Funding was provided by the National Institute of Mental Health (R01-MH126856), Johns Hopkins School of Medicine inHealth, Meta Platforms, Inc., the Johns Hopkins Business of Health Initiative, and the Louisiana Board of Regents Endowed Chairs for Eminent Scholars program.
###
END
A new AI-based system for analyzing images taken over time can accurately detect changes and predict outcomes, according to a study led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell’s Ithaca campus and Cornell Tech. The system’s sensitivity and flexibility could make it useful across a wide range of medical and scientific applications.
The new system, termed LILAC (Learning-based Inference of Longitudinal imAge Changes), is based on an AI approach called machine learning. In the study, which appears Feb. 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers developed the system and demonstrated it on diverse time-series of images—also ...
TORONTO, Feb. 27, 2025 – Research led by York University’s Faculty of Health reveals how a specific mutation in a protein called TRAF1 can shut down an overactive immune response, dramatically reducing inflammation in mice. Lead researcher Ali Abdul-Sater says this discovery could pave the way for a new class of drugs to treat rheumatoid arthritis.
“Rheumatoid arthritis is a common health condition which can interfere with many aspects of daily life and based on the limited efficacy ...
A new trans-Atlantic space initiative has launched, linking Texas and France in an ambitious effort to fuel startup growth, drive research and forge international partnerships. Announced at the 2025 ASCENDxTexas event Feb. 27, the Texas-France Space Hub aims to unite academic institutions and private enterprises, expanding commercial space presence in both countries.
The three-year initiative fosters global partnerships in aerospace, bringing together Rice University, Stellar Access and Houston Spaceport in Texas with France’s space agency CNES and ...
Planetary-mass objects (PMOs) are cosmic nomads: they drift freely through space, unbound to any star, and weigh less than 13 times the mass of Jupiter. While they have been spotted in abundance in young star clusters such as the Trapezium Cluster in Orion (Fig. 1), their origin has puzzled scientists. Traditional theories have suggested that they might be failed stars or planets ejected from their solar systems.
An international team of astronomers, in collaboration with the University of Zurich (UZH), has used advanced simulations to demonstrate that these enigmatic objects can form directly from the violent interactions of disks around young stars. “PMOs don’t ...
Bacteremia, or blood poisoning, occurs when bacteria overcome the body’s immune defenses.
Bacteremia can worsen into sepsis, a condition that accounts for more than 1 in 3 hospital deaths per year.
Yet people are routinely exposed to and fight off bacteria from the environment without this deadly series of events occurring.
Scientists are trying to figure out exactly how bacteria spread throughout the body to cause systemic infection in the hopes of eventually stopping this process in its tracks.
Michael Bachman, M.D., Ph.D., clinical associate professor of pathology and microbiology and immunology at U-M Medical School and former postdoc Caitlyn Holmes, Ph.D., ...
The Indiana University School of Medicine is accepting nominations until May 15, 2025, for the 2026 August M. Watanabe Prize in Translational Research.
The Watanabe Prize is one of the nation’s largest and most prestigious research awards recognizing senior investigators focused on shepherding scientific discoveries into new therapies for patients. Nominees should be members of the scientific or medical communities who have demonstrated outstanding accomplishments in translational research.
The winner of the 2026 Watanabe Prize in Translational Research will receive a $100,000 award and spend time in Indianapolis from September 16-18, ...
A new analysis of social media posts finds public support for solar energy remains high, though that support declined significantly from 2016 to 2022. The study also found solar power has become an increasingly polarized issue, with the shift in support being driven largely by opposition to solar power among people in regions that lean Republican.
“The U.S. saw significant growth in the solar energy sector between 2013 and 2022, but that growth has not been spread evenly across the country – some areas have seen more deployment of solar energy technologies than other areas,” says Serena Kim, corresponding author of ...
Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries are common, especially among athletes. Each year, over 400 000 ACL reconstruction (ACLR) surgeries are carried out globally. While the success rate of ACLR is reported to be over 90%, a significant number of patients still face issues like revision surgery and long-term osteoarthritis. This has spurred research into better graft materials, and artificial ligaments have emerged as a potential solution. A recent review article published in Engineering delves into the current state and future prospects of artificial ligaments for ACLR.
Artificial ...
1 Gene Variant Is Poised to Cure a Devastating Inherited Disease
Scientists compared five families and multiple generations to find a gene variant that prevents COPA Syndrome and opens the door to a new gene therapy for the condition.
For more than 15 years, Anthony Shum, MD, a pulmonologist at UC San Francisco, has tried to understand the random path of devastation that a rare genetic condition carves through the families it affects.
While many of those who carry the mutation develop severe lung hemorrhaging as children others never get the disease ...
In the rapidly developing contest between human creativity and artificial intelligence algorithms, professional artists still have an edge in producing more creative AI-assisted artwork than the AI programs themselves or novice artists, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
The rapid advancement of AI raises some existential questions about the nature of creativity, said lead researcher Paul Seli, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.
“Creativity ...
