A pilot study of telehealth-delivered treatment for emotional disorders in a frontier community

Access to high-quality evidence-based mental healthcare is limited, particularly among those living in extremely rural, frontier communities. Frontier communities often face unique stressors and have inflated mental health concerns including depressive symptoms and suicidality. Telehealth is a helpful option used to overcome barriers to care access; however, those living in frontier communities may be overlooked for fear that internet connection may not allow for adequate mental healthcare provision. Accordingly, we sought to demonstrate feasibility, acceptability, and efficacy of delivering the Unified Protocol (UP) for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders via telehealth among a frontier community of National Park Service (NPS) workers. Participants were asked to complete well-researched symptom measures of anxiety, depression, suicidality, and posttraumatic stress before treatment, following six weeks, 12-weeks, final treatment session and one-month post-treatment. Treatment outcome data are shared from four cases. All four patients completed treatment and endorsed improvements in all four domains of quality of life. No adverse events were reported. Overall, pilot data from this descriptive brief report demonstrate that treatment delivery is possible and well-accepted even in extremely rural and remote, at-risk communities.