At the back end of last year I explored a new study from Brigham Young University, which found that mental health apps can be just as effective for mental health as the numerous apps we rely on for our physical health.
“Our findings show that mental and emotional health focused apps have the ability to positively change behavior,” the authors say. “This is great news for people looking for inexpensive, easily accessible resources to help combat mental and emotional health illness and challenges.”
This support for mental health apps was echoed in a second study, published recently by researchers from the University of Washington. It found that mobile health interventions were as effective as clinic-based alternatives for people with mental illnesses.
Mobile mental health
The researchers compared a mobile health approach, called FOCUS, with a traditional clinic-based intervention known as the Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP). The researchers specifically looked for differences in patient engagement, satisfaction, improvement in symptoms, recovery and quality of life.
The participants, who had a range of long-term, serious mental health problems were randomly assigned to either of the two groups and then tracked during the course of the 12 week intervention. Assessments were done before the intervention, after it and then again six months later.
The results are quite telling. Those assigned to the mHealth group were more likely to begin mental health treatment (90% vs 58%). The FOCUS group had better success at getting people to the eight week mark, although by the full 12 weeks, the two groups had converged. Both interventions delivered improvements to the patients, both immediately after the treatment and six months later.
What’s more, participants in both groups reported high satisfaction with their treatment, saying that they were enjoyable and interactive. There appeared to be no difference in outcome in people based upon their age, gender, race or previous smartphone experience.
A sign of the future?
The authors believe their work is the first randomized controlled trial to compare a mHealth intervention with a clinic-based intervention for mental health illnesses, but there is a growing body of evidence to support mHealth applications for mental health issues.
The FOCUS app is designed for people with serious mental illnesses. It consists of the app, a clinician dashboard and then support from a specialist. It offers the user daily self-assessment prompts and a library of audio, video and textual content that can be viewed at any time. The data from the self-assessment tests are relayed to a support team who conduct weekly calls with the user.
As such tools begin to prove their worth in a range of settings, it seems inevitable that they will begin to play a bigger role in our mental wellbeing.
