Can mobile apps enhance the impact of evidence-based psychological treatments for youth with mental illness?

Recent advances in digital technology and mobile platforms have widely shown the potential to enrich evidence-based psychological treatments by supporting the remote delivery of therapeutic tools to individuals with mental illness. Compared to in-person approaches, mobile apps offer several benefits that are particularly attractive to youths struggling with mental illness. First, mental health apps enable scheduling flexibility and decrease scheduling burden, thus facilitating accessibility and compliance with intervention requirements and ultimately increasing cost-effectiveness. Second, mental health apps can enhance the quality of treatment by incorporating computerized treatments and innovative methods of communication, and by making treatment adaptive and responsive to dynamic, ecologically valid data. Third, mental health apps can be accessed with greater frequency than in-person treatment approaches for brief therapeutic interactions that help consolidate support and maintain inter-session continuity. Fourth, delivering treatment in real-world settings may support the retention, reinforcement and successful generalization of cognitive and behavioral skills. Finally, mental health apps can include opportunities for remote social engagement, like social networking or direct peer-to-peer messaging. The successful development of a mobile intervention for youth experiencing mental illness requires the coordinated activity of clinical researchers with patients, clinicians and the technology sector. The intervention should emerge in response to a symptom dimension or unmet clinical need, which resonates with the patient group it is intended to serve. Finally, building strategic and appropriately formalized academic-industry partnerships can result in long-lasting digital tools that are more easily adopted and disseminated.