Understanding the Rapidly Developing Field of Mobile Mental Health

In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in and research on the use of mental health technologies that aim to treat and manage mental health problems. From smartphone apps to bots, from machine learning to natural language processing, technology is poised to transform mental health service delivery. However, what out there is actually useful and what do the useful things actually do? In this talk, Dr. Schueller will discuss the status of digital mental health drawing from his own work, designing and deploying digital mental health tools for clients and therapists for the treatment of depression and for homeless youth to provide mental health resources outside of the confines of the therapy room. He will also present information on the rapidly developing area of smartphone apps for mental health drawing on learnings from the PsyberGuide project. This works demonstrates the potential of mental health resources to become more pervasive and to empower technologies to support the mental health of the people interacting with them but calls for dedicated attention to the design, implementation, and integration of such technologies to increase their usefulness.