Leveraging Mobile Health to Manage Mental Health/Behavioral Health Disorders: Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Background: Mental health is a complex condition, highly related to emotion. The COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant spike in depression (from isolation) and anxiety (event related). Mobile Health (mHealth) and telemedicine offer solutions to augment patient care, provide education, improve symptoms of depression, and assuage fears and anxiety.

Objective: This review aims to assess the effectiveness of mHealth to provide mental health care by analyzing articles published in the last year in peer-reviewed, academic journals using strong methodology (randomized controlled trial).

Methods: We queried 4 databases (PubMed, CINAHL [Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature], Web of Science, and ScienceDirect) using a standard Boolean search string. We conducted this systematic literature review in accordance with the Kruse protocol and reported it in accordance with the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis) 2020 checklist (n=33).

Results: A total of 4 interventions (mostly mHealth) from 14 countries identified improvements in primary outcomes of depression and anxiety as well as in several secondary outcomes, namely, quality of life, mental well-being, cognitive flexibility, distress, sleep, self-efficacy, anger, decision conflict, decision regret, digestive disturbance, pain, and medication adherence.

Conclusions: mHealth interventions can provide education, treatment augmentation, and serve as the primary modality in mental health care. The mHealth modality should be carefully considered when evaluating modes of care.

Trial registration: PROSPERO International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews CRD42022343489; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.php?RecordID=343489.

Keywords: RCT; SMS text messaging; anxiety; behavioral health; mHealth; mental health; mobile device; smartphone; telemedicine.