Faculty
Health Sciences
Supervisor Name
Jessica Polzer
Keywords
mental health, digital health, technology, autoethnography
Description
Digital mental health (DMH) technologies include information and communication technologies with wide-ranging aims to support mental health. With the proliferation of publicly available mental health apps, there appears to be the emergence of two categories of apps: formal apps aimed at specific clinical disorders and informal apps with a broader focus on general mental health and wellness. While DMHs have been some claimed to be a promising means to address gaps in mental health resources and interventions for under-serviced populations, they have received limited evaluation and critical analysis.
My project aimed to critically examine how informal DMH apps function to teach users to learn about and enact their understandings of mental health and distress in particular ways.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Dr. Jessica Polzer, the Western USRI program, and the Faculty of Health Studies for their support.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Poster
A Critical Perspective on Mental Health Apps
Digital mental health (DMH) technologies include information and communication technologies with wide-ranging aims to support mental health. With the proliferation of publicly available mental health apps, there appears to be the emergence of two categories of apps: formal apps aimed at specific clinical disorders and informal apps with a broader focus on general mental health and wellness. While DMHs have been some claimed to be a promising means to address gaps in mental health resources and interventions for under-serviced populations, they have received limited evaluation and critical analysis.
My project aimed to critically examine how informal DMH apps function to teach users to learn about and enact their understandings of mental health and distress in particular ways.