Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Feb 28, 2021
Date Accepted: Jan 3, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Coaching to Support Mental Health Apps: An Exploratory Narrative Review
ABSTRACT
Background:
The therapeutic alliance is crucial for the success of face-to-face therapies. Little is known about how coaching functions and fosters the therapeutic alliance in asynchronous treatment modalities, like smartphone apps.
Objective:
To explore evidence around coaching to support mental health apps
Methods:
We conducted a selected review to gather preliminary data about the role of coaching in mobile technology use for mental health care. We identified 24 randomized controlled trials using Tønning et al.’s 2019 review to assess how coaching is currently being utilized across different studies.
Results:
Our results showed a high level of heterogeneity as studies utilized varying types of coaching methods but provided little information about coaching protocols and training. Coaching was feasible by clinicians and non-clinicians, scheduled and on-demand, and across all technologies ranging from phone calls to social media.
Conclusions:
Further research is required to better understand the effects of coaching in mobile mental health treatments but examples offered from reviewed papers suggest several options to implement coaching today.
Citation
