Digital Micro Interventions for Behavioral and Mental Health Gains: Core Components and Conceptualization of Digital Micro Intervention Care

Abstract

Although many people access publicly available digital behavioral and mental health interventions, most do not invest as much effort in these interventions as hoped or intended by intervention developers, and ongoing engagement is often low. Thus, the impact of such interventions is minimized by a misalignment between intervention design and user behavior. Digital micro interventions are highly focused interventions delivered in the context of a person's daily life with little burden on the individual. We propose that these interventions have the potential to disruptively expand the reach of beneficial therapeutics by lowering the bar for entry to an intervention and the effort needed for purposeful engagement. This paper provides a conceptualization of digital micro interventions, their component parts, and principles guiding their use as building blocks of a larger therapeutic process (ie, digital micro intervention care). The model represented provides a structure that could improve the design, delivery, and research on digital micro interventions and ultimately improve behavioral and mental health care and care delivery.

Keywords: adherence; behavior change; behavioral health; eHealth; engagement; intervention; mental health; mhealth; micro intervention.

Figure 1

Illustration of a sequence of events based on decision rules.

Figure 2

Nurturing a therapeutic narrative as a moderator to the connection between a digital micro intervention and sense of ownership and commitment to the therapeutic process.

Figure 3

Visualization of the relationship between core components of digital micro intervention care.

Figure 4

Levels of optimization.

Figure 5

Illustrations of stepped care and digital micro intervention care models.