Smartphone Apps May Help Reduce Depressive Symptoms

Smartphone applications (apps) can be effective tools for improving symptoms of mild to moderate depression, reports ameta-analysis published inWorld Psychiatry. Apps that are entirely smartphone based and apps that provide direct feedback are associated with better results than those that require additional components or feedback from humans."Patients and doctors are faced with a vast array of mental health apps these days, and knowing which ones are helpful is imperative," said study co-author John Torous, M.D., co-director of the digital psychiatry program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a chair of APA ’s Smartphone App Evaluation Work Group.Torous and his colleagues evaluated 18 clinical studies with 3,400 participants who tested mobile health apps for depressive symptoms. The 18 studies included people with clinical or self-reported depression as well as other disorders with depressive elements such as bipolar disorder, anxiety, or posttraumatic stress disorder.Overall, the authors found that the use of a mental health app provides modest improvements in symptoms, with larger effects seen when the app was compared with an inactive control (like a waitlist) versus an active control (such as a non-mental health app). That suggests that some of the improvements are due to having a device--a sort of digital placebo. Benefits were also more pronounced for patients with mild to moderate depression; smartphone apps did not appear helpful for individ...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: depression meta-analysis mobile app mobile health smartphone app Source Type: research