Mental health app review

Anytime a client wants to add a mental health app to their toolkit, or asks the therapist to recommend one. The structured review forces both client and clinician to look past marketing and check whether the app actually does what it claims.

The form has 10 fields. There’s a 0–10 slider for “How easy is the app to use”. There’s a 0–10 slider for “How likely it is to be effective for your therapeutic goal”. There’s a 0–10 slider for “How well it can be personalised”. There’s a 0–10 slider for “How well it gives you feedback about your behavior”. A Yes/No/Unclear radio for “Is the app based on current psychological research?”. A Yes/No/Unclear radio for “Do the developers have specific knowledge or experience in this subject?”. A Yes/No/Unclear radio for “Does the app have a clear privacy policy (what is collected, stored, shared, sold)?”. A Yes/No/Unclear radio for “Can you export or print your data, or share it with other health tools?”.

A clinical note worth holding: apps that score high on ease and personalisation but low on research evidence and privacy. Those are the most common downloads and the most likely to do harm, especially for clients with sensitive content (trauma logs, suicidality tracking). The privacy section matters most for those clients. Worth using this together with the client in session at least the first time.

In my-cbt, the form is in the system templates and ready to send. The personal message field is where you frame the task for this client. Submissions show up in the case file alongside the session notes. Slider values are stored as numbers, not handwritten digits, so the scores aggregate across submissions.