JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The Covid-19 mitigation protocols, enacted to control the pandemic, have also been shown to have negative impact on mental health, including the mental health of adolescents. The threat of being infected by Covid-19 and substantial changes on lifestyle including limited social interaction due to stay-at-home order leads to loneliness as well as having depressive symptoms. However offline psychological assistance is restricted as they are bounded by the mitigation protocols. Further, not all adolescents’ guardians are open for their children or have means to pay for psychological service, thus the adolescents remain untreated. Having a mobile mental health (m-health) app which employs monitoring, providing social networks, and psychoeducation may provide as a solution especially for countries that have limitations in health facilities and mental health workers.

Objective:

This study aimed to design an m-health application to help prevent and monitor depression in adolescents.

Methods:

We employed a design science research methodology with three iterations and eight golden rule guidelines. The first iteration used interviews, and the second and third used mixed methods approaches.

Results:

The first iteration resulted in a wireframe and prototype for the next iteration. The second iteration showed a system usability scale score of 67.27, indicating a good fit. In the third iteration, the system usefulness, information quality, interface quality, and overall values were 2.416, 2.341, 2.597, and 2.261, respectively, indicating a good design.

Conclusions:

Our findings provide guidance for health facilities and for designing and implementing future m-health applications to help treat adolescent depression.