Screening Applications for Depressive Disorder: A Review of the Literature (Preprint)

Abstract

Depressive disorders are highly prevalent, and results in significant morbidity and mortality. A recent meta-analytical review reported the point and lifetime prevalence of depressive disorders in the community to be 12.9% and 10.5%, respectively. Screening for psychiatric disorders is essential as it not only allows for the early recognition and detection of the condition amongst individuals but also allows for the timely provision of treatment interventions. With the advances in technology, there have been several studies reporting how smartphone devices could assist in screening. Whilst there have been individual studies reporting of the effectiveness of smartphone applications for the screening for depressive disorders to date there remains no review that has synthesised the literature for evidence of screening for depression using smartphone applications.

Given this, the primary objective of the current review is in reviewing the published literature to determine the scientific evidence for the efficacy of screening of depressive disorders using mobile applications. The secondary objective is in determining the identified applications are available on the commercial application stores.

A search of PubMed and MEDLINE for relevant articles from inception to September 13th, 2018 was conducted. Articles were included if they were evaluating depressive disorder, and if the study involved the use of a mobile phone or smartphone application, and if the study reported how screening was conducted. A manual search was then conducted to determine if the applications reported in the published literature were also commercially available.

A total of 7 published articles were identified. Based on the published articles, the pick-up rates for depressive disorders are as high as 82.5%. The high pick-up rates could be accounted for by the use of validated questionnaires, and also by the use of sophisticated computer algorithms. Of the applications identified in the published literature, our manual search only managed to identify one, which was available only on the Google Play Store.

Our review is perhaps the first review that has evaluated for depression screening applications in the published literature and cross-checked to determine if the identified applications are also available commercially. The limited available of validated applications on the commercial stores has resultant implications for both academics and clinicians.