Mobile Applications in Mood Disorders and Mental Health: Systematic Search in Apple App Store and Google Play Store and Review of the Literature (Preprint)

Abstract

There are thousands of health apps available, including for mood disorders. However, their access is unstructured, and most are never download nor used. Their outcomes are rarely systematically measured and therefore effectiveness is disputed, even potentially damaging. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed and continues to pose a significant burden on population mental health, yet it has also given rise to rapid eHealth development. However, despite increasing reliance on eHealth solutions, major knowledge gaps on their utility and effectiveness persist.

The main objective of this work was to explore and characterize the current landscape of mobile applications available to treat mood disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder, and dysthymia.

We developed a tool that makes both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store searchable using keywords and that facilitates the extraction of basic app information of the search results. All app results were filtered using various inclusion and exclusion criteria. We characterised all resultant applications according to their technical details. Furthermore, we searched for scientific publications on each app’s website and PubMed, to understand whether any of the apps were supported by any type of scientific evidence on their acceptability, validation, use, effectiveness, etc.

Thirty apps were identified that fit the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The literature search yielded 27 publications related to the apps. However, these did not exclusively concern mood disorders. 6 were randomised studies and the rest included a protocol, pilot-, feasibility, case-, or qualitative studies, among others. The majority of studies were conducted on relatively small scales and 9 of the 27 studies did not explicitly study the effects of mobile application use on mental wellbeing.

While there exists a wealth of mobile applications aimed at the treatment of mental health disorders, including mood disorders, this study has shown that only a handful of these are backed by robust scientific evidence. This result uncovers a need for further clinically-oriented and systematic validation and testing of such apps.