JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

There has been a surge in mental health apps over the past few years. While these have great potential to address unmet mental health needs of the population, the recent proliferation of mental health applications in the commercial marketplace has raised several concerns, such as privacy issues, evidence-base and quality. Although there is mounting research on effectiveness of mental health apps, the majority of these are not accessible to the public and most of those available have not been researched. There are no comprehensive studies from India that review publicly available mental health apps. This is despite the rapid growth of the digital health market in India. Hence it becomes important to review mental health apps freely available to the potential end-users in terms of their scope, functions and quality.

Objective:

The current study aims to systematically evaluate mental health applications available to Indian users in virtual stores.

Methods:

This systematic review of mental health applications will be done following the TECH approach and the Protocol for App Store Systematic Reviews (PASSR). Fifteen key search terms covering various mental health conditions and therapies will be used on the Android and iOS stores. The identified apps will be further screened and reviewed based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The pool of eligible apps will be downloaded for detailed review. A series of steps will be adopted to streamline the review process and increase inter-rater consistency through training and the use of a panel of primary reviewers and mentors. Data will be extracted based on pre-decided parameters such as privacy policy, basic purpose, type of developer, nature of intervention strategies, guided vs unguided nature etc. Additionally, the apps will be reviewed using the Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS). The data analysis and synthesis strategy will incorporate descriptive statistics in addition to qualitative analysis.

Results:

The initial screening of mental health apps available for Indian users on Google Play Store and Apple App has been initiated in October 2024. We expect to complete the detailed systeematic review by March 2025.

Conclusions:

This study will offer a comprehensive review of mental health apps available in digital marketplaces for Indian users and has implications for end-users, policymakers, developers and mental health professionals. Clinical Trial: International Platform of Registered Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Protocols, INPLASY2024100035, DOI 10.37766/inplasy2024.10.0035.