While it can take nearly a decade for a new drug to go from the lab to marketplace, smartphones apps can be created and placed on app marketplaces in only a matter of weeks or months. Many of these apps are targeted towards psychiatric conditions like major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder, and offer novel tools and potential treatments for the mental health field.
But unlike a medication that comes to the marketplace with a wealth of data on safety, side effects, efficacy, contraindications etc., apps that come onto the marketplace are often scare on clinical or scientific data. Universities, researchers, and industry are beginning to fill in those gaps and gather clinical data on how patients use and respond to smartphone apps for a variety of mental illnesses.
However, because apps are changing so quickly, it can be hard for researchers to keep up and an app studied today but not even be available tomorrow! Reviewing the literature on smartphone apps for psychiatric conditions provides patients, clinicians, and policymakers a glimpse of the current clinical and scientific data supporting app use in mental health.
It is certain that industry has already created newer and more advanced apps than those studied by researchers and published in scientific papers, but it is important for the mental health community to judge apps based on evidence – just as any other diagnostic or treatment modality currently is judged.
In our paper, we review the current literature on smartphone apps applied towards major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. We propose a novel framework to help categorize and better understand app research and use that as a starting point to examine current trends and likely next steps for the role of smartphone apps in mental health.
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