NPR.org » Mental Health Apps: Like A 'Therapist In Your Pocket'

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This is wrong on so many levels that it took me and my husband well over an hour

to read it. And our discussion has just begun.

Mind control; being the very " voices " that schizophrenics follow; Big Brother;

activation of their drones. Could this be used as a " psycho-trigger " making

those under the influence of the meds become violent army-like murderers? The

Beast.

Terry

Mental Health Apps: Like A 'Therapist In Your Pocket'

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Dr. Margaret at Intel Corp. is designing a cell phone app to help manage

stress in everyday life, in order to improve mental health and reduce the risk

of cardiovascular disease. calls the app " Mobile Therapy. "

Published: May 24, 2010

by Trudeau

As the computing power of cell phones increases, more and more sophisticated

mobile apps are being developed for the mental health field. They're seen as a

way to bridge periodic therapy sessions -- a sort of 24-7 mobile therapist that

can help with everything from quitting smoking to treating anxiety to detecting

relapses in psychotic disorders.

These mobile technologies let users track their moods and experiences, providing

a supplemental tool for psychiatrists and psychologists.

" It gives me an additional source of rich information of what the patient's life

is like between sessions, " says University of Pennsylvania researcher Dimitri

Perivoliotis, who treats patients with schizophrenia. " It's almost like an

electronic therapist, in a way, or a therapist in your pocket. "

Here's how one of the apps, called " Mobile Therapy, " works: Throughout the day

at random times, a " mood map " pops up on a user's cell phone screen. " People

drag a little red dot around that screen with their finger to indicate their

current mood, " says Dr. Margaret , a clinical psychologist working at

Intel Corp. and the app's designer. Users also can chart their energy levels,

sleep patterns, activities, foods eaten and more, she says.

Gaining New Insights And Reducing Stress

designed the app, which can be downloaded onto most cell phones, to try

to help people manage the stress of everyday life, to improve their mental

health and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Based on the information entered by the user, the app offers " therapeutic

exercises " ranging from " breathing visualizations to progressive muscle

relaxation " to useful ways to disengage from a stressful situation, says.

And the information the app captures can later be charted, printed out and

reviewed. The idea is that users can look at a whole week of mood data to see if

there are any connections between their mood and other factors happening in

their lives, and record it into the app.

' Mobile Therapy app has been beta-tested in 60 people, and " everyone who

used it described new insights about their emotional variability " and said it

helped reduce their stress, she says.

Her research was recently published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research,

where she writes that by using the app, participants were able to increase

" self-awareness in moments of stress, develop insights about their emotional

patterns and practice new strategies for modulating stress reactions. "

Helping Teens With Behavioral 'Homework'

Another mobile app being developed targets a large group of cell phone users:

teenagers.

Alan Delahunty, a psychotherapist from Galway, Ireland, treats teens suffering

from clinical depression using cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. An

essential component of CBT is " homework, " which involves patients keeping a

daily diary, charting their moods, energy levels, sleep, activities, etc.

Typically, patients will bring their paper charts into their therapist to

discuss them during their weekly therapy session. But many patients --

especially teens -- balk at doing the CBT homework, and many stop doing it.

Previous research suggests that patients who do their CBT homework assignments

and practice them between sessions are the ones who benefit the most and benefit

the most quickly.

Knowing this, researchers Gavin Doherty and Mark s at Trinity College in

Dublin developed a cell phone app that's being tested by a couple of dozen

therapists throughout Ireland.

Delahunty, one of the testers of the " mobile mood diary, " says it's a very

useful tool.

" From a clinical point of view, I've found it a huge improvement over the

pen-and-paper technique, " Delahunty says. He adds that his young patients love

the app and rarely miss doing their daily homework. They're pleasantly surprised

that they can use their cell phones to help themselves in therapy. And when they

come into therapy, he says, " You get a complete printout of their mood, their

energy level, their sleep patterns, and any comments they've made over the week

or two. And then you can put that down on the table in front of you, and use it

to discuss the therapy with the young person. "

Because teens are so comfortable with texting, Delahunty adds, " I'm getting more

comments. And in some cases, it's really like narrative therapy, where you'd be

getting a paragraph of text for each day, which brings out a richness in the

therapy situation that you can explore then. "

Psychiatrists, too, find the mobile mood diary a benefit by looking at the

graphs, monitoring the young person's moods. " That was helpful to them, in

deciding whether the young person should be on medication or change their dosage

or whatever because it [the mobile mood diary] was a very accurate measurement

of how the young person's mood was moving, " Delahunty says.

Apps For Severe Depression, Schizophrenia

Another mental health app under development, called CBT MobilWork, is tailored

to adults with severe depression.

It's a collaboration between Judy Callan, a researcher at the University of

Pittsburgh, and computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University that Callan

hopes to adapt for use in mental health programs for anxiety, phobias, eating

disorders and more.

Callan describes how a typical patient might use this app, which tailors CBT

homework to each user: " Say a patient just starts therapy and they're really

depressed and they can hardly get out of bed. One of their homework assignments

might be to, each day, just make your bed, " Callan says.

Once the patient has successfully accomplished that task, the homework on the

phone app will change, prompting and coaching the patient to take the next step.

There's also an app for one of the most intractable mental disorders:

schizophrenia, which affects 1 percent of the U.S. population. It's for these

patients that the University of Pennsylvania's Perivoliotis is developing

innovative mobile technologies: palm-sized computers that chart a patient's

moods and activities, for example; and a digital watch that has personalized

scrolling messages. The messages on the watch can instruct a patient who hears

voices, for example, to do exercises like deep breathing or muscle relaxation

" to reduce the stress triggered by their voices, " he says.

" One of our patients came in with chronic, constant auditory hallucinations that

really controlled his life, " Perivoliotis recalls. " The voices would threaten

him that if he would go outside and do fun things, then terrible, catastrophic

things would happen to him. He felt really enslaved by them. He felt no sense of

control whatsoever. "

So the therapist taught the patient a few simple behavioral exercises to reduce

the severity of the voices. It's an exercise called the " look, point and name

technique, " Perivoliotis explains. " When a patient starts to hear voices, he

applies the technique by looking at an object in the room, pointing to it and

naming it aloud. He repeats this until he runs out of things to name. "

Perivoliotis says " the technique usually results in reduced voice severity

[i.e., the voices seem quieter or pause altogether], probably because the

patient's attention is redirected away from them and because speaking competes

with a brain mechanism involved in auditory hallucinations. "

So the mobile therapy watch that this patient wore was programmed to remind him

a few times a day to practice this technique to control the voices.

" It really did the trick, " Perivoliotis says. The voices were dramatically

reduced. " It kind of broke him out of the stream of voices and his internal

preoccupation with them. "

Exercises like these not only give the patient temporary relief from distressing

symptoms but also, importantly, " they help to correct patients' inaccurate and

dysfunctional beliefs about their symptoms -- from, 'I have no control over the

voices,' to, 'I do have some control over them,' " Perivoliotis says. Copyright

2010 National Public Radio

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