Mental disorders are the leading contributors to the global nonfatal burden of disease. In Asia, the number of disability-adjusted life of years (DALYs) due to mental disorders increased from 43.9 million to 69.0 million over the past three decades. Despite the rising health burden, fragmented mental health service delivery, low continuity of care, and ineffective referral systems often limit the access and quality of mental healthcare. The rising popularity of digital health technologies both globally and across Asia has the potential to address these challenges by facilitating self-management and improving connectivity between patients and healthcare providers, particularly in resource-limited areas. The presentation will review the current digital mental health practices in Asia by drawing on finding from two scoping reviews. The first review employed the classification frameworks of the World Health Organization (2023) and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2024) to systematically map 57 digital mental health applications implemented in primary health care settings across Asian countries. These interventions were assessed at the health system, provider, and patient levels, and evaluated against eleven standardized indicators encompassing performance, accessibility, ethics, and health outcomes. We found that majority of digital interventions were identified in the People’s Republic of China and India, with mobile-based technologies emerging as the predominant modality. However, most interventions were limited to patient-level communication, with minimal integration of provider-focused deliverable capabilities. The second review focused on digital mental health interventions in the Greater China Region, which is identified as a geographic focal point for digital mental health practice in Asia. We identified 28 unique interventions reported in 31 trials across 30 publications. Most of which were mobile-based and conducted in economically developed regions of China. While most interventions demonstrated significant improvements in reducing mental health symptoms, key limitations were evident, including restricted public accessibility, considerable heterogeneity in study quality, and a lack of population-level preventive approaches. Future research is needed to address these issues within the mental healthcare system in Asia to enhance health system resilience, equity, and integration across and beyond the region.
