An evaluation model created specifically for such apps can help inform your discussions
Have your patients asked you about smartphone apps? If they haven’t yet, they may soon, as interest in apps for mental health continues to expand. There are now >10,000 mental health–related smartphone apps.1 The rapid rise of these apps is partly due to their potential to transform a patient’s smartphone into a monitoring and therapeutic plat-form, capable of capturing mental health symptoms in real time and delivering on-the-go therapy. Setting aside ques-tions about the potential of mobile health, 2 urgent questions remain for the busy psychiatrist in clinical practice: What is the current evidence base for mental health apps, and what should you tell your patients about them?