Can an app help people with mental health issues? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Rates of mental health problems have reached epidemic levels during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now a new study shows that for some, use of an app rather than in person therapy provided nearly the same improvement. Eric Strain, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins, says this is a very practical approach.

Strain: At that outpatient care level we need to be thinking about electronically delivered services and there’s a lot of those out there now that are FDA cleared apps. We need to think about that as the very base of the triangle because if people can get services out of those rather than needing to go into outpatient care with a provider, then let’s use those services, those apps. It’s been shown to be effective, it makes a lot of sense, I think that they could start out with something like that to see if it could help them  :30

Strain says it might be worth talking with a primary care physician to get started and perhaps trying more than one app to find a good fit for you. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.