While smartphone usage is ubiquitous and the market for smartphone apps targeted at mental health is growing rapidly, the evidence of standalone apps for treating mental health symptoms is still unclear, according to new research.
A 2018 analysis that investigated the efficacy of standalone smartphone apps for mental health, and which was recently published in Nature, involved a comprehensive search for randomized controlled trials investigating the effects of standalone apps for mental health in adults with heightened symptom severity, compared to a control group.
In total, researchers analyzed the results of 19 randomized controlled trials comprising a total of 3,681 participants, as detailed in 5,945 records and 165 full-text articles. The apps included in the trials were used as standalone interventions for behavioral health issues such as depression, anxiety, substance use, self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (STBs), PTSD and sleep problems.
The researchers noted that mobile apps do have the potential to help overcome some behavioral health issues as they provide the opportunity to engage individuals in need of treatment timely and anonymously by providing portable and flexible treatment. What’s more, mobile health might reach individuals who would otherwise not seek treatment.
As such, the mobile app landscape targeting mental health has increasingly been growing. According to a 2017 report, more than 318,000 health-related mobile apps were available for consumers of which 490 unique apps were targeted at mental health and behavioral disorders.
Across the studies that the researchers examined, behavioral health mobile apps were found to have “significant” pooled effects for depression and smoking. However, no significant pooled effects were found for anxiety, alcohol use, and STBs. “These effect sizes are in line with previous research investigating the efficacy of apps for depression and anxiety regardless of whether the app was aimed at depression or anxiety, or another mental health domain,” the researchers noted.
Meanwhile, both of the analyzed trials that targeted PTSD did not find significant effects of the evaluated interventions, whereas both trials on insomniac complaints did, with medium to large effect sizes.
The researchers concluded, “These findings imply that the accumulating evidence for digital mental health interventions delivered through the internet as an effective mean to treat mental health disorders cannot be directly translated to digital interventions delivered via standalone mobile apps for all mental disorders.”
They added, “The development of digital mental health services should be user-driven and solution-focused, including app developers, researchers and clinicians in the process. It is important to investigate app features and components, which make smartphone apps unique delivery modalities, such as context sensing, constant access and availability, high likelihood that prompts are received in daily life, and the combination possibilities with physiological assessments. The feature-driven approach could be helpful to understand working mechanisms of apps for mental health.”
The researchers also offered that “one possibility to benefit from apps that already show small effects such as for depression, smoking, and sleep problems could be to have them integrated into a clinical setting in which a professional can monitor progress and provide additional support.”
