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sanjsrik t1_j21xx0e wrote

How about designing apps for mental health without scheming how to sell user data out the back door or adding massive amounts of location trackers?

That would be a good start for a mental health app.

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JadedFennel999 t1_j225f67 wrote

Innovative features such as specialized therapies.. what does that even mean? It's an app not a therapist.

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Love4KittyButtholes t1_j226413 wrote

Well, what if there are some bits of therapy that could be replicated and served from an app? For example, I'm on a forum for sleep therapies and one of them is light therapy. I don't know the capabilities of a smartphone in terms of light emission but imagine if that was possible. Simple things like positive affirmations can be easily repeated on an app.

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JadedFennel999 t1_j23dcnk wrote

I'm sure some techniques would be fine. Most of them use some type of CBT as a tool for teaching those type techniques. But anything more specific than that, you really need a qualified therapist to work with and it wouldn't be helpful with any deep emotional integration.

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Love4KittyButtholes t1_j24lvln wrote

We don't have good access to mental health services where I am because we don't have universal Healthcare. I'd argue an app is better than nothing.

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probablynotreallife t1_j249ggr wrote

I have a radical idea:

Governments could fund free healthcare services through corporate taxation and make them accessible to all.

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guygeneric t1_j24i03i wrote

You fool, that would never work! It would be anarchy! Chaos! Our skin would fray and our eyes would boil out of our heads! The fish would all die and locusts would swarm our crops! Traffic lights would all go down, and buses would disintegrate, and the bags inside of cereal boxes would all open properly until about halfway across and then suddenly split down the middle!

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Toodlesxp t1_j26maew wrote

Actually this guy is right. Armageddon. We have to keep it from happening.

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DigitalSteven1 t1_j22q26d wrote

Let's get this out of the way really quick. An app should not be for "specialized therapy," your phone app is not a replacement for a therapist. It's a good thing these apps don't offer fake therapy through them.

​

As for privacy concerns, yeah I agree there.

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TanningTurtle t1_j238xkx wrote

Exactly. Anything much beyond goal tracking and mindfulness excercises aren't really going to work through an app.

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Sea_Till9977 t1_j26mavh wrote

NOCD is an app quite popular for OCD sufferers which doesn’t act as a therapist but provides specialized therapy to guide self CBT exercises (usually prescribed by a therapist and commonly known as ERP) and stuff like that

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Fjells t1_j23f4kt wrote

Well, what if you add a chat or dialogue option with a therapist?

Seems to have good indications for use in most clinics. With an added bonus of not needing to meet up in a clinic for the patients. Found a study on exactly that, that seems positive

Nordgreen, T., Gjestad, R., Andersson, G., Carlbring, P., & Havik, O. E. (2018). The effectiveness of guided internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy for social anxiety disorder in a routine care setting. Internet Interventions, 13, 24-29.

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Toodlesxp t1_j26mo2k wrote

If you are interested, there are apps like that. Wysa and woebot. They help a little, but you have to be consistent, and the answers are usually generic. Plus they have to improve the thing so you know someone's reading your stuff to fix the algorithm.

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Reckless_Forearm t1_j23vrw7 wrote

Specialized therapies doesn't mean that the app is acting as a therapist - this could be any custom experience.

It could mean self-guided CBT, or a potential smartwatch integration that would recommend mindfulness/breathing when it recognizes stress.

Going a step beyond goal-tracking, if someone hasn't met a goal in a certain period of time, an app could ask about what barriers an individual has been struggling with (time, anxiety, forgetfulness) and provide a custom recommendation or automatically set a reminder.

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potsandpans t1_j25leac wrote

all of these MH apps are awful and not a replacement for therapy. silicon valley will literally try to profit off of anything. it’s gross

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State_Dear t1_j26cjhg wrote

The system melts down when 2 AIs start talking to each other

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