JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Language barriers in mental healthcare can hinder diagnostic accuracy, communication quality, and therapeutic rapport. Multilingual mental healthcare providers or qualified interpreters are not always available, prompting interest in mobile translation applications as alternative tools. The usability of such tools in mental health consultations remain underexplored.

Objective:

This pilot study aims to assess whether a mobile machine translation application can support mental healthcare providers in conducting accurate mental health assessments with patients who speak a different language. Secondary objectives include assessing usability, communication quality, translation accuracy, and non-verbal interaction in a simulated mental healthcare setting. The feasibility objectives are to examine recruitment, retention, data completeness, time adherence, acceptability, scenario realism, and resource requirements, in order to inform the design of a larger future trial.

Methods:

This is a single-arm, simulation-based, mixed-methods pilot study involving 12 German-speaking mental healthcare providers and two Turkish-speaking standardised service users. In this study, mental healthcare providers include both fully trained professionals and individuals in advanced training involved in mental healthcare delivery. Each provider will participate in a simulated mental health consultation lasting up to 30 minutes, using a mobile translation app with voice and text translation capabilities. Data will be collected via video and audio recordings, app usage metrics, post-simulation questionnaires, and optional qualitative interviews. Data will be analysed using descriptive statistics, thematic analysis, and mixed-methods triangulation.

Results:

At the time of submission, no participants had been recruited. Preparatory work, including scenario development, scoring rubrics, and data collection materials, was in an advanced stage. Recruitment is scheduled to begin in December 2025, with study completion anticipated in March 2026. Results will be reported in a future publication.

Conclusions:

This pilot study will provide initial evidence on the usability and feasibility of mobile translation applications in mental healthcare and inform the design of a larger implementation study. Clinical Trial: Pilot study not subject to mandatory trial registration. The study was registered on Open Science Framework (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/7R2HN).