Mental Health Mobile Apps for Patients: Psychiatrists' Concerns Mobile Apps in Mental Health Care?

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Mental Health Mobile Apps for Patients: Psychiatrists’ Concerns
1 Department of Medical Psychology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany ; 2 Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; 3 Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
Mobile Apps in Mental Health Care?
Saskia Hanft-Robert1, Katarina Tabi2, Harleen Gill2, Amelie Endres2, Magdalena Spokova3, Sanam Javid2, Regina Demlova3, Michael Krausz2
Smartphones and mobile apps have increasingly become part of our
lives
More than 3billion smart phone users worldwide
Ever-growing number of mobile health apps, including over 10,000
mental health related apps
Mobile mental health apps could be beneficial, but vary significantly in
quality and effectivity
Benefits:reaching and providing mental health care to people who
are unable to access face-to-face services due to geographical or
financial barriers1;increasing the treatment adherence2;
effectiveness for patients already receiving face-to-face services
Significant variation in quality and effectivity, only aportion of them
are evidence-based3
The perspective of practitioners needs to be included
Patients are often introduced to mobile mental health apps by their
practitioners
Explore psychiatrists’ concerns about mobile apps for patients with a
mental illness
It seems crucial to investigate practitioners’ attitudes and, in
particular, their concerns towards using and recommending mobile
mental health apps to their patients
Semi-structured interviews with 18 psychiatrists (Female= 11, Male= 7)
Recruited in Czech Republic, Austria, and Slovakia in 2017 via
snowball sampling
Digitally recorded, transcribed verbatim, translated into English,
content analyzed (deductive and inductive category development
approach4)
Unfamiliarity with apps and/or thinking the apps aim to
replace, rather than support, face-to-face treatment more
likely to have concerns about mental health apps
Familiarize clinicians with the use of mobile apps and
educate them on how mobile apps could support face-to-
face treatment
Strong need to renegotiate the role of clinicians in the
eHealth era5
1 [Van Ameringen, M., et al., There is an app for that! The current state of mobile applications (apps) for DSM-5 obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety and mood disorders. Depress Anxiety,
2017. 34(6): p. 526-539.] 2[Perez-Jover, V., Sala-Gonzalez, M., Guilabert, M., & Mira, J. J. (2019). Mobile Apps for Increasing Treatment Adherence: Systematic Review. J Med Internet Res, 21(6), e12505.
doi:10.2196/12505] 3[Lecomte, T., et al., Mobile Apps for Mental Health Issues: Meta-Review of Meta-Analyses.JMIR Mhealth Uhealth, 2020. 8(5): p. e17458.] 4[Kuckartz, U., Qualitative Text Analysis. A Guide to
Methods, Practice and Using Software. Vol. 2. 2014, London: SAGE Publications Ltd.] 5[Sinclair, C., et al., Online mental health resources in rural Australia: clinician perceptions of acceptability.J Med Internet Res, 2013.
15(9): p. e193.]
Objective
Method and Participants Discussion
Take-home message:
Practitioners' attitudes play a significant role in the
implementation process of effective mobile mental health
apps. Hence, it is of utmost importance to being aware of
and understanding their concerns in order to address
them. Future studies should focus more on potential
concerns to gain further insight.
Patients become
their own doctors
“I wouldn’t put such information there because they might start to think they know how to handle
the medication and ‘become their own doctor’. Patients cannot decide about themselves
objectively.”
Results
Effectiveness
depends on type
and severity of
mental illness
“Patients with anxiety, Ithink, will monitor it often and will gladly spend the time, and energy to
do it, and will be happy to discuss it with their doctor. But patients with psychosis probably not.”
No individual
response or
treatment
“We have to adjust the information to every patient to
explain it to him reasonably.How to increase the
awareness –it is individual.”
Fear of being
replaced
“And if there is such an app, what is the psychiatrist for?
When all the information is in the app? […] To sign a
prescription?”
Lack of experience
with mobile apps
“It is for young doctors who are more experienced with
mobile apps and are more interested in these things. I do
not think of myself as of an old generation, but Ido not like
mobile apps.”
Contact: s.hanft-robert@uke.de
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