In the latest trial, a clinical psychologist spent just two hours by email with each patient over 10 weeks of the programme, about a quarter of the time a clinician would spend in traditional face-to-face treatments.

Titov said the online programmes represented a new cost-effective way of reaching people who are otherwise unable to access treatments, said a UNSW release.

He said the initial pilot investigations were so successful that participants were now being sought for new, larger trials of the Worry and Shyness programmes. The clinic expects to treat more than 1,200 people in online trials by the end of the year.

The paper is slated for publication this month in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry.