The safety of digital mental health interventions: Findings and recommendations from a qualitative study exploring users’ experiences, concerns, and suggestions (Preprint)

Abstract

The literature around the safety of digital mental health interventions is growing. However, the user/patient perspective is still absent from it. Understanding the user/patient perspective can ensure that professionals address issues that are significant to users/patients and help direct future research in the field.

This qualitative study aims to explore digital mental health interventions’ users’ experiences, views, concerns, and suggestions regarding the safety of digital mental health interventions.

The inclusion and exclusion criteria were 18 years old or above, has previous experience using a digital mental health intervention (DMHI) and can speak and understand English without the need for a translator. Fifteen individual interviews were conducted. Deductive thematic analysis was used to analyze the data.

The analysis of the interview transcripts yielded four main themes: Safety Concerns: users’ concerns around the safety of DMHIs, Safety Assessment: assessing a DMHI’s safety from users’ perspectives, Experienced Risks: the risks experienced by DMHIs’ users, Experienced Mitigations: the risk mitigation methods experienced by DMHIs’ users, and Mitigation Suggestions: users' suggestions on how risks can be mitigated.

The results of this study led to seven recommendations on how the safety of digital mental health interventions can be improved. These recommendations arose from users' experiences and suggestions. If implemented, these recommendations can improve the safety of digital mental health interventions and enhance users’ experience.