Patient and Therapist Adoption Criteria for Mental Health Applications

As demand has risen significantly, mental health care is at a continuous service gap due to cost, availability and accessibility of resources, and stigma. Mental health apps have recently become a potential solution to address these issues. Although over 10,000 mental health applications are available to the public, their quality and effectiveness vary. Therefore, assessing what qualities of a mental health app are essential to proper care from a therapist and patient perspective can help navigate the available offerings, improve the features of apps and their use, and guide the development of future tools. To this end, several studies reviewed the features of mental health apps. However, only a few simultaneously considered the patient and therapist perspectives in the context of the therapeutic alliance. In this article, we present a literature review that evaluates mental health applications through the lens of a well-known model to understand key adoption criteria from both patients’ and therapists’ standpoints. We conclude that effective patient experience involves reliability of information, availability of treatment options, and privacy concerns. From a therapist’s perspective, relevant topics included validated screening measures, proper data analysis, positive reduction in workload, communication with patients, and adoption of therapeutic alliance principles.