Is delivery format associated with the outcome of mental health treatment?

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed the way in which mental health care was delivered. It forced clinicians and patients to move away from face-to-face therapies toward other formats, including telephone, video, and digital treatments. Therefore, the pandemic provided an excellent opportunity to examine the attitudes of patients and clinicians toward telemental health care and other treatment formats than the traditional face-to-face sessions. The systematic review of Connolly and colleagues in this issue (see record 2025-17163-001) on patient and provider attitudes toward video and phone telemental health care during the pandemic, provides an excellent overview of the research on these attitudes. The review showed that in most studies, providers were found to be more positive about delivering care through video than through the phone, while for patients there were no clear preferences. This is very important information that can be used in the clinical decision-making process of clinicians and patients. Apart from preferences, it is also important to take the effects of interventions, established in randomized controlled trials, into account in the clinical decision making between clinicians and patients. Although there is very little research directly comparing video and phone formats, there is quite some research on treatment formats in general and on whether the format may play a role in the effectiveness of interventions. In this Commentary, I will review this research and try to draw some preliminary conclusions on whether treatment format can be related to the overall outcomes of therapies.