On the involvement of mental healthcare professionals in the co-design of highly-rated anxiety apps

Mobile applications (apps) have the potential to assist people with their mental health issues. They have shown promising results in mitigating many mental health disorders and symptoms, including issues related to anxiety. Mental health apps are based on different approaches, one of which is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). However, these solutions still face many concerns and challenges, such as the lack of involvement and inputs of mental healthcare professionals (MHP) in their design and evaluation. This paper focuses on highly-rated CBT-based apps for anxiety and investigates the involvement of MHP in their co-design. Based on the obvious importance of inclusion of mental health professionals in the creation of mental care apps, the following hypothesis was formed: MHP are involved in the design and creation of CBT-based apps for anxiety. To investigate this hypothesis, 23 apps were selected and analysed. Results showed that contrarily to the initial hypothesis, about half of the selected CBT-based apps for anxiety did not involve MHP in their design. Results also showed that the number of installs of the selected apps might be impacted by the involvement of MHP. The average of installs of apps which involved MHP was significantly higher than the average of installs of apps that did not. This might indicate that users tend to trust apps that involve MHP more, which might have impacted their decision to install them. Findings of this study might be of interest to people suffering from anxiety, to help them find apps for anxiety that are based on MHP input, as well as to developers and researchers targeting similar apps.