Mobile apps are available for a growing number of medical conditions, but are they suitable for mental health care?  A new report suggests there are clear pros and cons.

Such digital forms of mental health provision are increasingly common, with sites such as Crisis Text Line and 7 Cups of Tea providing counseling services via both web and mobile channels.  To date however, more mainstream health care providers have stayed away.

Virtual support

They suggest that having an AI based counselor could help to overcome some of the challenges people face in opening up to another person about their problems.  What’s more, access to services is not always easy, so virtual conversational agents provide an accessible means of getting some support.

Suffice to say, the authors admit that such services are not, and probably never will replace human mental health professionals, but they can help to fill gaps in service provision that do inevitably exist.  This is especially so in public health systems where supply struggles to match demand.

There are also risks attached with such services, especially if they are the first time an individual has sought mental health support.  A bad experience may well put them off seeking help from any other source in future.  It’s also important that people understand that such services are not a substitute for human-to-human connections.  Keeping a balance is key.

Early signs indicate that such services are already very popular, with hundreds of thousands of people using the likes of 7 Cups of Tea.  Despite this, the authors believe it unlikely that these channels will be adopted by more mainstream providers of mental health services until therapeutic benefits have been determined, and the various privacy and compliance hurdles have been crossed.

Nonetheless, their popularity does underline the incredibly strong demand for safe, scalable and cost-effective mental health treatment.  It would be great to see such services scrutinized for their clinical viability to better understand when such conversational agents are most effective, and when they might actually be harmful.  It’s a process that is still at a very early stage, and so the impacts are largely unknown, especially over the longer term.

It’s a trend definitely worth keeping an eye on though.