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Wearable devices: are we ready for the paradigm shift in psychiatric treatments?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2025

Victoria E. Cleak
Victoria E. Cleak*
Affiliation:
awaiting Care Quality Commission approval to enable her to practise privately. She has previously held substantive consultant posts as a liaison psychiatrist with Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, Southampton, UK, and as a general adult psychiatrist at Dorset Healthcare NHS Trust, Wimborne, UK, working on in-patient wards and in the community. She has particular interest and expertise working with people who have adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and comorbid psychiatric disorders.
*
Correspondence Email: vickycleak@hotmail.com
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Summary

There has been a boom in the availability of wearable neuromodulator devices for the treatment of mental health problems. These can be purchased outside of medical practitioner oversight or prescription. Psychiatrists need to know what these can offer and consider whether, and how, they may be integrated into psychiatric practice. This article briefly considers examples of these devices and their evidence base. It describes the experiences of the author and her husband in using such devices for their own mental healthcare and well-being.

Keywords

Neuromodulationmental illnesswearablestranscranial direct current stimulationvagus nerve stimulation

Information

Type
Clinical Reflection
Information
BJPsych Advances , First View , pp. 1 - 3
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal College of Psychiatrists

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References

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Woodham, RD, Selvaraj, S, Lajmi, N, et al (2025) Home-based transcranial direct current stimulation treatment for major depressive disorder: a fully remote phase 2 randomized sham-controlled trial. Nature Medicine, 31: 87–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
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