The work of UW–Madison’s Simon Goldberg is examined in a report from the health-oriented news website STAT that’s headlined, “What types of mental health apps actually work? A sweeping new analysis finds the data is sparse.”
Goldberg is an assistant professor with the School of Education’s Department of Counseling Psychology, and an affiliate faculty member with UW–Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds.
The report examines a meta-review paper that was published in PLOS Digital Health by Goldberg and a study team, including Sin U. Lam, a PhD student in the Department of Counseling Psychology, and UW–Madison alumna Shufang Sun, who earned her doctorate within the Department of Counseling Psychology and is now an assistant professor at Brown University.
Co-authors of the study also include Otto Simonsson, a former postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Healthy Minds, and John Torous of Harvard Medical School.
The study examined 14 meta-analyses that focused specifically on randomized control trials for mobile phone-based mental health interventions, including apps and text-message based support designed as treatment for depression, anxiety, and smoking cessation.
Goldberg told Stat that though the evidence these treatments work isn’t strong yet, better studies will surely emerge for some of the more promising interventions.
“I would bet the farm that if you wait five years and people keep running these trials, there will be convincing evidence,” he said.
Though none of the interventions studied were found to show “convincing evidence” that they were effective, eight were found to hit a slightly lower bar of having “highly suggestive” evidence.
The Stat report adds that “none of those eight used control treatments that were designed to be therapeutic,” and only one — which provided text message support for smoking cessation — was compared to an active control, meaning, the report explains, that “the comparison group received something to occupy their time and attention.”
“For me, this suggests that mobile phone-based interventions might not be uniquely effective, but still are effective relative to nothing or non-therapeutic interventions,” said Goldberg. “Given the scalability of these interventions, that’s still good news.”
In fact, despite a lack of convincing evidence and active controls, Goldberg told Stat that he sees the study’s findings as a positive sign of where the research is headed.
“Given how recent apps are in human history, there’s a ton of research on them, and there’s evidence that they’re yielding benefits,” he said. “To me, it’s super encouraging.”
To learn more, check out the full report at statnews.com.
The study by Goldberg and his team was also highlighted recently in a daily briefing published by nature.com and other news outlets.