Mental Health Apps for Children and Adolescents: A Clinician-Friendly Review

Abstract

Mobile apps for mental health and wellness (MH apps) have the potential to support youth mental health, expanding access to the large proportion of youth with mental health concerns who do not access formal treatment. Survey data suggest that young people are highly interested in MH apps, with minoritized youth (eg, LGBTQ individuals) and youth with elevated depressive symptoms reporting especially high rates of downloading MH apps.¹ In addition, systematic reviews and meta-analyses suggest that MH apps can be effective.² Although many popular MH apps do not have direct empirical evidence supporting their efficacy,³ they often include elements of empirically supported treatments for children and adolescents.⁴ The MH app space moves at a fast pace, making it difficult to stay up-to-date. More than 10,000 MH apps exist, with hundreds released each year.⁵ Even interested clinicians may, understandably, not have time to sort through the large number of apps, scientific papers, and app directories. Furthermore, these resources are rarely designed to offer clear, actionable advice for clinicians. Clinicians could benefit from information and guidance to help patients safely navigate MH apps and to best use MH apps in treatment. Here, we provide 3 key points about youth MH apps ("takeaways"), each with an actionable implication for clinicians ("action items"). We also provide examples of specific questions for clinicians to support their use of MH apps with children and adolescents (Table 1). More information regarding where we derived these recommendations is available in Supplement 1, available online.