Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Mental Health
Date Submitted: Jun 3, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Jun 6, 2019 - Aug 1, 2019
Date Accepted: Mar 19, 2020
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Mobile App Integration Into Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Persons With Borderline Personality Disorder: Qualitative and Quantitative Study
Background:
The advancement of and access to technology such as smartphones has implications for psychotherapeutic health care and how interventions for a range of mental health disorders are provided.
Objective:
The objective of this study was to describe the experiences of participants while using a mobile phone app that was designed to enhance and support dialectical behavior therapy for personality disorders.
Methods:
A combination of in-depth interviews and questionnaires were used to capture the experiences of participants who used the app while undergoing dialectical behavior therapy treatment. A mixed methods approach was used; qualitative data from the interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis and were combined with quantitative data from the questionnaires.
Results:
Participants (N=24) who were receiving dialectical behavior therapy used the trial app. Participants (n=20) completed an evaluation questionnaire and a subset of this group (n=8) participated in semistructured interviews. Major themes that were identified from the interviews were (1) an overall positive experience of using the app—participants perceived that the app facilitated access and implementation of dialectical behavior therapy strategies (to regulate mood and behavior in challenging situations)—and (2) that the app provided a common source of information for patient and therapist interactions—app-based interactions were perceived to facilitate therapeutic alliance. Qualitative themes from the interviews were largely congruent with the quantitative responses from the questionnaires.
Conclusions:
Participants welcomed the integration of technology as a supplement to clinical treatment. The app was perceived to facilitate and support many of the therapeutic techniques associated with dialectical behavior therapy treatment. The incorporation of technology into psychotherapeutic interventions may facilitate the transfer of knowledge and strategies that are learned in therapy to use in real-world settings thereby promoting recovery from mental health problems.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.