Digital Mental Health Policies in 40 Countries: A Comparative Content Analysis Based on the Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability, and Quality Framework—113 Original policies and 1270 coded References

This dataset supports the study entitled “Digital Mental Health Policies in 40 Countries: A Comparative Content Analysis Based on the Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability, and Quality Framework.” The dataset was developed through a comparative content analysis of 113 national policy documents from 40 countries across four World Bank income groups. The included documents cover national digital health policies and strategies, mental health policies and strategies, digital mental health policies, telemedicine regulations, data-governance instruments, and other national-level documents relevant to the development, governance, regulation, or implementation of digital technologies in mental health services. The deposited materials include: A structured coding dataset containing 1,270 coded references. Each record includes the corresponding country, income group, policy title, AAAQ domain, analytical dimension, subtheme, original-language policy passage, and source language. The source corpus of 113 policy documents, where redistribution is permitted. The policies were originally published by national governments, public authorities, or other officially designated institutions and were collected from publicly accessible sources. The analytical framework was informed by the Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability, and Quality (AAAQ) approach. It comprises four overarching domains and 14 analytical dimensions: Availability: devices and technologies, service availability, and workforce; Accessibility: administration, finance, physical access, and information; Acceptability: attractiveness, ethical issues, usability, and digital literacy; Quality: effectiveness, connection quality, and scientific evidence. Within these 14 dimensions, policy passages with similar meanings were inductively organized into 66 subthemes. A coded reference was defined as a sentence or a contiguous group of sentences expressing a policy proposition relevant to the analytical framework. Each coded reference was assigned to the dimension and subtheme that best represented its principal policy meaning. Documents written in languages other than Chinese or English were translated into Chinese for coding. The translations retained in the dataset were manually checked against the corresponding source-language passages. The original-language passages and the Chinese translations used during NVivo coding are presented side by side to support transparency, verification, and reuse. The dataset can be used to reproduce the descriptive analyses, policy-content distributions, cross-income comparisons, and country-level policy-coverage classifications reported in the associated study. It may also support secondary research on digital mental health governance, comparative health policy, digital health equity, policy implementation, and the application of the AAAQ framework. The coded dataset was created by the study authors. Copyright and other intellectual-property rights in the original policy documents remain with their respective issuing institutions or rights holders. Inclusion of a policy document in this deposit does not transfer ownership or imply that the document is covered by the same reuse licence as the author-created coding dataset. Users should consult the source and rights information associated with each policy document before redistribution or reuse.