JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

A large number of people are affected by mental disorders. A transdiagnostic symptom and risk factor for the majority of mental disorders is repetitive negative thinking (RNT). Psychotherapy can reduce RNT, but the majority of people in need do not receive psychotherapy or face long waiting times. The greatest barriers for receiving and staying in treatment are low perceived need and attitudinal barriers. Other barriers are finance and availability. Mobile health (mhealth) interventions, that are provided by mobile devices, could overcome some of these barriers.

Objective:

The aim of this scoping review is to identify existing mhealth interventions for RNT and to give an overview of their characteristics regarding content, context, and technical features. Another goal is to identify which outcomes and questionaires are used to measure RNT.

Methods:

The planned scoping review will be conducted according to the JBI methodology for scoping reviews and will be reported in accordance with the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. English peer reviewed literature from 2003 on will be included. A comprehensive research will be conducted in the following data bases: PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science. Two independent reviewers conduct a two-stage screening process (screening of title/ abstract and full text) of the articles according to the inclusion criteria.

Results:

Data collection begins on the fifth of February 2025. Extracted data will be analyzed to answer the research question. Results will be presented in tabular form with a supplementary text. The final scoping review including the final results is planned to be published in a peer-reviewed journal and the results will also be disseminated at conferences.

Conclusions:

The scoping review should lead to a better understanding of the conceptual possibilities and commonalities of current mhealth interventions for the transdiagnostic symptom RNT. It should provide starting points for systematic reviews and also for the development of transdiagnostic mobile health interventions for mental health. Clinical Trial: The scoping review is preregistered at OSF, the preregistration can be found in the registered project (DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/SY2A9). The preregistration was conducted today and will be publicly available within the next 72 hours.