THE USE OF VIDEOCONFERENCING FOR TELEPSYCHIATRY IN FINLAND

Some of the first telepsychiatry experiments in Finland were carried o ut at the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Oulu, where vi deoconferencing has been used for family therapy, occupational counsel ling, consultation and teaching. In 1996 videoconferencing was used fo r a total of 249 hours, which increased to 434 hours in 1997. During 1 997, 45% of the time was used for teaching, 26% for occupational couns elling, consultations and therapies, 23% for training and 6% for admin istration (mainly testing the connections). In a survey, 37 participan ts rated aspects of the quality of the videoconferences on a scale fro m 4 (poor) to 10 (excellent). The audio quality had a mean value of 8. 0 (SD 0.9), the picture quality 7.5 (SD 1.5), and the general value of the videoconference was rated 7.5 (SD 1.0). Preliminary results with telepsychiatry in Finland have been promising. Interactive videoconfer encing provides an easy, fast and relatively inexpensive method of pro viding psychiatric services over long distances.