Mobile mental health: a challenging research agenda

The field of mobile health (“m-Health”) is evolving rapidly and there is an explosive growth of psychological tools on the market. Exciting high-tech developments may identify symptoms, help individuals manage their own mental health, encourage help seeking, and provide both preventive and therapeutic interventions. This development has the potential to be an efficient cost-effective approach reducing waiting lists and serving a considerable portion of people globally (“g-Health”). However, few of the mobile applications (apps) have been rigorously evaluated. There is little information on how valid screening and assessment tools are, which of the mobile intervention apps are effective, or how well mobile apps compare to face-to-face treatments. But how feasible is rigorous scientific evaluation with the rising demands from policy makers, business partners, and users for their quick release? In this paper, developments in m-Health tools—targeting screening, assessment, prevention, and treatment—are reviewed with examples from the field of trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder. The academic challenges in developing and evaluating m-Health tools are being addressed. Evidence-based guidance is needed on appropriate research designs that may overcome some of the public and ethical challenges (e.g., equity, availability) and the market-driven wish to have mobile apps in the “App Store” yesterday rather than tomorrow.

移动医疗（m-Health）领域正迅速发展，市场上心理健康工具的增长呈现出爆炸性趋势。令人兴奋的高新技术发展或许能够识别症状、帮助个人管理自身的心理健康、鼓励寻求帮助，并提供预防与治疗干预。这一发展具备成为高效且经济的途径的潜力，有助于减少等待名单并服务于全球相当一部分人群（g-Health）。然而，为数不多的移动应用程序（app）经历了严格的评估。关于有效筛查和评估工具的可靠性、哪些移动干预应用程序是有效的，以及移动应用程序与面对面治疗相比的效果如何，信息甚少。然而，在政策制定者、商业伙伴和用户对快速发布的日益增长需求下，严格的科学评估的可行性如何？在本文中，我们回顾了m-Health工具的发展，这些工具旨在筛查、评估、预防和治疗，并以创伤和创伤后应激障碍领域的实例进行说明。在开发和评估m-Health工具方面所面临的学术挑战正在得到解决。关于适当的研究设计，需要基于证据的指导，以克服某些公众和伦理挑战（例如，公平性、可及性）以及市场驱动的愿望，即在“App Store”中昨日而非明日便拥有移动应用程序。