Review of Mobile Health Technologies in Mental Health Promotion

This report examines the role of mobile health (mHealth) technologies in promoting mental health, particularly among individuals with serious mental illnesses. It begins by highlighting the increasing use of mobile and wireless technologies in healthcare and their potential to improve patient engagement and understanding of mental wellbeing. The report reviews existing literature, identifying barriers to traditional mental health treatments, such as limited resources and social stigma, and emphasizes the need for innovative solutions like mHealth. Various mHealth interventions, including text messaging and internet-based programs, are discussed, along with their benefits such as convenience, anonymity, and cost-effectiveness. The report also addresses the research question of how different mobile health technologies can promote mental health, and outlines a research plan involving a systematic review to investigate the effects of mental disorders on health, the significance of research, issues encountered while developing mobile health tools, and the resources that should be expanded. The methodology includes background search, study selection, data collection, and thematic analysis to link findings with research aims and objectives. The report concludes by acknowledging limitations and suggesting future recommendations for leveraging mHealth in mental health promotion. Desklib provides access to similar reports and study resources for students.

Promoting mental
health through
mobile technology
Name of the Student
Name of the University

Introduction
• Mobile and wireless technologies have
the potential of providing support to
various health objectives.
• Technology has become an unavoidable
fact of the daily lives
• Wireless technology have attractive
advantages that have accelerated the
fast development and use of mobile
applications (McNaughton and Light
2013)
• Mobile devices are considered as the
gateway to improve engagement of the
patients with their healthcare providers

Background information
• The current healthcare system is replete with
uncertainties for healthcare providers and the
patients, in addition to the key stakeholders
• Recently conducted research studies state
that patients show an increased desire of
remaining connected to their physicians (Free
et al. 2013)
• This facilitates the process of quality
interactions about health at the bed side.

Mobile usage
• Rates of mobile usage are found to
be approximately 89 per 100
inhabitants, across developing
nations (Itu.int 2018)
• Mobile technologies are also used for
accomplishing a range of daily tasks
such as, socializing, banking and
shopping
• There are a range of factors that
have driven the change in the use of
mobile technology in healthcare

Mobile health technologies
• Mobile health technologies have opened a
new frontier for supporting mental health
among people
• Mobile and wireless devices such as,
smartphones and tablets are providing the
opportunity to monitor patient progress
• They are also increasing the understanding of
mental wellbeing

• Mobile health technologies are
integrated into healthcare through
text messaging, teleconferencing, and
internet based interventions
• Such technology based applications
often use the built in sensor of the
device to collect patient information
on behavioural patterns
• These technologies take into
consideration the fact that more than
40% of the global population can
access the internet

Literature review
• Patient diagnosis, case formulation, and
monitoring the outcomes are integral to
delivery of evidence-based mental health
treatments (Salinas et al. 2016)
• Unlike domains of healthcare, mental health
treatment do not require any blood tests or
other diagnostic assays for determining the
symptoms of a client
• Mental health clinicians had to earlier
depend on their clinical judgment skills and
the self-reported symptoms of a client

 Solely relying on clinical judgment and self-
reported problems have been identified
problematic (Glenn and Monteith 2014)
 These traditional methods were dependent on
a retrospective recollection by the patients
during clinical interviews
 Mental health problems have recently been
recognised as a major reason that attributes
to global disability burden and account for
more than 14%

 Most mental disorders encompass
depression, post-traumatic stress
reactions, substance abuse and
anxiety
 According to the WHO World Mental
Health Survey Consortium, 76–85%
patients with mental health disorders
get no treatment facilities in low and
middle income countries (Benjet et al.
2016)
 A minute proportion of the health
budget gets allocated for treatment of
these disorders

Barriers
 Major barriers to these treatments
include limited infrastructure and
funding, lack of human resource, social
stigma, inequitable distribution of care
services, and centralisation
 WHO has taken efforts to support the
process of task-sharing, while increasing
the access to quality care
 Low-intensity and cross-diagnostic
psychological/mental interventions have
been developed and tested

 Extended workforce represents an essential
component in addressing mental health
disorders in low resource settings
 There are limits in the sustainability and
scalability of human resources
 Meta-analytic reviews suggest that task sharing
cannot be considered as the sole solution for
addressing the treatment gap (Padmanathan
and De Silva 2013)
 Incentives, competence, worker distress and
lack of acceptance are major barriers

Need of mobile health technologies
 This called for the need of going beyond
mobilisation of human resources
 Non-consumable technology resources
were thus identified crucial in this
respect
 Mobile and wireless technologies were
thought to help in reducing the scarcity,
inefficiency and inequity of existing
mental health services
 The brevity and relative simplicity of
these interventions support their
adaptation