Department of Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Black Dog Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Evid Based Ment Health. 2018 Aug;21(3):116-119. doi: 10.1136/eb-2018-102891. Epub 2018 Jun 5.
The potential of smartphone apps to improve quality and increase access to mental health care is increasingly clear. Yet even in the current global mental health crisis, real-world uptake of smartphone apps by clinics or consumers remains low. To understand this dichotomy, this paper reviews current challenges surrounding user engagement with mental health smartphone apps. While smartphone engagement metrics and reporting remains heterogeneous in the literature, focusing on themes offers a framework to identify underlying trends. These themes suggest that apps are not designed with service users in mind, do not solve problems users care most about, do not respect privacy, are not seen as trustworthy and are unhelpful in emergencies. Respecting these current issues surrounding mental health app engagement, we propose several solutions and highlight successful examples of mental health apps with high engagement. Further research is necessary to better characterise engagement with mental health apps and identify best practices for design, testing and implementation.
智能手机应用程序改善心理健康护理质量和增加可及性的潜力越来越明显。然而,即使在当前的全球心理健康危机中,智能手机应用程序在诊所或消费者中的实际采用率仍然很低。为了了解这种二分法,本文回顾了当前围绕心理健康智能手机应用程序用户参与度的挑战。虽然智能手机参与度指标和报告在文献中仍然存在异质性,但关注主题为识别潜在趋势提供了一个框架。这些主题表明,应用程序不是为服务用户设计的,不能解决用户最关心的问题,不尊重隐私,不可信,在紧急情况下也没有帮助。为了尊重围绕心理健康应用程序参与度的这些当前问题,我们提出了一些解决方案,并强调了具有高参与度的成功心理健康应用程序示例。需要进一步研究以更好地描述心理健康应用程序的参与度,并确定设计、测试和实施的最佳实践。