In the National Institute of Mental Health’s 2018 publication, “Technology and the Future of Mental Health Treatment”, multiple faces of utilizing online mental health treatment methods are examined. Technology offers a major window of opportunity in terms of mental health advancement, such as accessibility to crisis centers or apps that can monitor patterns in their user’s behaviors (NIMH 1). The advantages of these apps include convenience, anonymity, good introduction to care for first-step users, lower cost, can service to more people, more appeal, 24-hour service, consistency of treatment, and holistic support (NIMH 1). However, with little industry regulation and little information on these apps’ effectiveness backed by credible science, users are unsure of what mental health treatment apps to trust on the market. Disadvantages of these apps could include questionable effectiveness, inapplicable to some mental health diagnoses, guidance (no industry-wide standards), privacy issues, regulation of data, and overselling (promising more than the app can deliver) (NIMH 2). Despite the disadvantages of moving forward with online mental health therapy methods, there has been an uptick in new app development for self-management, improving thinking skills, skill training, illness management, and passive symptom tracking (NIMH 2).

Research has found that app-based intervention methods are most effective when users like them, are engaged with them and want to continue using them (NIMH 3). However, for people who need help but don’t want to get the help, where is the incentive for them to actively log on to one of these apps? At a certain point, there needs to be a level of human interaction to account for the fact that HCI cannot manage mental illness all on its own. Additionally, with no board or system of rules in place to review mental health apps, users are putting their trust in apps that are not credible and may make their mental health state even worse. Moving forward, these apps should focus on targeting specific mental health concerns, as an app curated for bipolar users could be completely different from depressed or anxious users. At the end of the day, the majority of people will need that face-to-face interaction at some point to bridge the gap of therapy that today’s mental health apps simply cannot do.

The concern for relying on mental health apps to help manage users’ illnesses is validated in Amber Quinney’s Ted Talk “Social Media: The Biggest Threat to Your Brain”. Quinney explains that by relying on Google or an app to tell us the answers to all our questions, we get into the pattern of thinking that there is nothing else to be learned or discovered. Instead, she says, we should look within ourselves and connect with others to find answers to these questions rather than relying on the technology of an app or search engine. So, as for these mental-health apps, a user may be better off spending 30 minutes journaling and talking with another person to conduct therapy rather than spending 30 minutes on one of these apps.