Creating technology that empowers users’ in their health management has been a critical area of growth within the HCI/ tech and healthcare community. Healthcare within the US is often inaccessible and typically only accessible for those who are privileged enough to afford or have access to it. Additionally, those who have a high level of wealth, they are able to gain access to the most prestigious intuitions and treatments that are not available to the general public. To further complicate health care access, a individuals access or willingness to access health care can be further diminish due to community stigma of certain conditions and/or a community lack of trust of the healthcare profession in general. Addressing accessibility issues, trust of healthcare professionals along with de-stigmatization of conditions is critical if we are going to have a healthy and thriving global community.

In a effort to address access to affordable and accessible healthcare, technology experts have been working in tandem with health care experts to develop applications and technology to empower users. One prime example is the work that Lattie et al. [1] conducted to address the growing mental health problems among young college students. Working with clinicians and students, they generated findings that could lead to the development of future mental wellness applications or resources for students to access.

Although this was a smaller study with approximately 30 participants, it did yield high level discussion points and areas for future research [1]. A prime concern is how the application is to be labeled and marketed. Moving away from an app that was labeled and marketed as a mental health app, researchers and participants agreed that an app that promoted well being along with resources would prove to be of more value [1].

While this is a step in the right direction, there is a growing area of concern. When developing applications that are mental health focused, researchers often address common areas such as depression and anxiety while avoiding complex mental health conditions. In doing this, it complicates the usefulness of the app as well as potential good vs harm a mental health/ mental well being app can do. While some apps involve clinicians, many still don’t or their involvement is limited. In addition to the limited range of mental health conditions the app(s) can address, they are being built on platforms that already struggle with addressing accessibility issues. Covid-19 highlighted the need to accessible and affordable healthcare as well as the disparity of access to reliable high speed internet was highlighted during onset of Covid-19 when many had to work and/or learn remotely.

Another major consideration that still needs to be address is scale up factor. How well will the application scale up? Does the app usefulness begin to get diluted the more users it gains? How do app developers propose to address more serious mental health conditions or will the app evolve to a simple platform? How will the app fair in the overly flooded mental health app market? A growing area of concern is privacy and security. How can developers develop an app that protects a users privacy and guarantees a level of security that their data is being protected? Especially for those apps that involve the most personal and revealing data.

In order for mental health/ mental well being apps to be successful and prove of real value, access to mental health professionals needs to be greatly expanded. Mental health apps should only be used as tools not as a replacement. For in-depth and real mental health care, professionals need to be involved. Applications cannot and should not replace the human element during evaluation, assessing and recommending appropriate treatment. Further, community trust needs to be addressed. Through launching public relation campaigns we can begin to address stigmatization within communities.

As these apps continue to develop, I will continue to be skeptical of implementation and accessibility of the apps. On a final note, until regulatory agencies create updated guidelines for data protection and security, and our healthcare system remains to cater to the most privileged, our most vulnerable populations continue to be left being exposed when using these types of applications in addition to a lack of resources.

References

[1] Emily G. Lattie, Rachel Kornfield, Kathryn E. Ringland, Renwen Zhang, Nathan Winquist, and Madhu Reddy. 2020. Designing Mental Health Technologies that Support the Social Ecosystem of College Students. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (April 2020). DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376362