Coaching to Support Mental Health Apps: Exploratory Narrative Review

Abstract

Background The therapeutic alliance is crucial for the success of face-to-face therapies. Little is known about how coaching functions and fosters the therapeutic alliance in asynchronous treatment modalities such as smartphone apps. Objective The aim of this paper was to assess how coaching functions and fosters the therapeutic alliance in asynchronous treatment modalities. Methods We conducted a selected review to gather preliminary data about the role of coaching in mobile technology use for mental health care. We identified 26 trials using a 2019 review by Tønning et al and a 2021 scoping review by Tokgöz et al to assess how coaching is currently being used across different studies. Results Our results showed a high level of heterogeneity as studies used varying types of coaching methods but provided little information about coaching protocols and training. Coaching was feasible by clinicians and nonclinicians, scheduled and on demand, and across all technologies ranging from phone calls to social media. Conclusions Further research is required to better understand the effects of coaching in mobile mental health treatments, but examples offered from reviewed papers suggest several options to implement coaching today. Coaching based on replicable protocols that are verifiable for fidelity will enable the scaling of this model and a better exploration of the digital therapeutic alliance.