Efficacy of Mental Health Apps and Related Tools on Social Media: A Systematic Review of Researches

In recent times, digital consumers have access to a variety of MHApps but choosing one that’s useful presents a challenge. Google and Apple’s digital marketplaces offer approximately 20,000 MHApps. In India, relying on such apps to understand and improve mental health issues remains ambiguous due to the stigma attached. MHApps may facilitate skill building, endorse psychoeducation, and self-monitoring features to treat and improve clinical symptomatology. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate prior research studies on the effectiveness of social media tools and MHApps on various digital platforms. The study drew on governmental statistics in addition to secondary data derived from national and international journals, websites, Google and Apple app stores. Using MHApps is a potential way to enhance well-being as they provide coping strategies in the absence of clinicians and in immediate crisis situations. However, with a lack of options depending on one’s preferences and features such as personalization, control, trust, poor customer service, security and unaffordability usage becomes difficult. Without awareness among people designing MHApps would be misleading. Consequently, randomized control trials (RCTs) on larger sample sizes are needed to measure the effectiveness of such apps. Despite the claims and usage of MHApps, it is evident that adherence remains seemingly low, therefore offering cost-effective ways to incorporate an array of system features and strategies to manage mental health and well-being on devices should be integrated. For legitimizing such apps intervention by professional clinicians and empirical evidence based-methods are needed in their development to help alleviate symptoms. To make MHApps more effective in the Indian context, cross-cultural differences should be examined.