A majority of psychologists believe mobile apps could advance mental health treatment

SelfEcho

Clinical psychologists believe mobile apps geared toward mental healthcare treatment have potential to improve patient care and practice management. According to the recent national survey conducted by Sigma Research, mental healthcare professionals are ready to adopt new mobile technologies that can bridge data gaps to improve therapy practice.

68% said that integrating additional data from apps for mental health tracking into therapy practices would help clinicians advance their profession.The survey indicates that 73% feel that these apps would be useful to track client progress and 59% felt that it was useful for treatment planning. Two thirds of survey respondents (66%) believe that being able to obtain additional data on clients using a mobile app would improve their ability to treat them, and 68% said that integrating additional data from apps for mental health tracking into therapy practices would help clinicians advance their profession.

“Therapists traditionally don’t know much about what’s happening to and with their clients when they aren’t in the therapist’s office,” said Dr. Daniel Gilbert, a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and a senior research director at SelfEcho. “I think mobile technology applications have the potential to close this gap by using client-approved real time monitoring to communicate important information to therapists so they can improve their treatment.”

The study surveyed 401 mental health clinicians from various specialties, including licensed professional counselors, licensed clinical psychologists, licensed clinical social workers and licensed marriage and family therapists. The respondents were from the Northeast, Midwest, Southern and Western regions of the United States. Developer of technical solutions for mental health practitioners SelfEcho commissioned the survey.