Leigh S. (2016). Comparing applets and oranges: Barriers to evidence-based practice for app-based psychological interventions. Evidence Based Mental Health, 19(3): 90-92. PMID: 27431656
Despite the potential for mobile applications (apps) to be important tools in mental health care, there has been little to no regulation of apps as psychological interventions. As a result, apps for mental health are available with little to no evidence of their effectiveness. There are several barriers to conducting research on the effectiveness of these apps and using this research to select apps to integrate into clinical care. There is no agreement on how these apps should be evaluated, which makes it difficult to compare apps that have been evaluated because they may have been evaluated in different ways. App developers have little incentive to integrate user evaluations that may be off-putting to consumers into their apps, especially when the market for apps is so volatile. The authors encourage greater regulation of apps for mental health care and call for greater emphasis on pragmatic trials that are more feasible for evaluating the effectiveness of apps than randomized controlled trials. Collaboration between developers and behavioral health professionals can promote both user-centered development and evaluation of mental health apps. By improving the body of research of apps for mental health, these apps will have a better chance of reaching consumers through recommendation by clinicians and health insurance coverage.