Mobile apps for people with mental illness

mHealth proves to be equally efficient in ameliorating mental illness when compared to clinic-based therapy as suggested by a study carried out amongst mentally disoriented people.

A study carried out by elite scientists revealed that an app can do just as many wonders as a live doctor can. With this, the reliability of medical officers on technology and information systems when applied to medical sciences elevated highly. The analysis was carried out amongst the mentally disoriented people and mHealth proved to be highly effective in such cases. The study has been published online by psychiatrists who performed this well-oriented analysis.

The basis of this was a randomized controlled trial amongst around 163 individuals who had long-term memory loss with severe schizophrenia and mental illness.

Cell-phone-based intervention FOCUS was compared with traditional group WRAP, Wellness recovery action plan.

Even the on-site based therapy couldn’t outshine effects of a mHealth platform. The analysis was carried out under the guidance of Dror Ben-Zeev, PhD, with the University of Washington, Seattle. The basis of this study was differences in treatment engagement, satisfaction, and improvement in symptoms of the patient who’s mentally ill. Along with this, the recovery and quality of life also played a crucial role in the analysis.

Bipolar disorders and depressive diseases were also considered during this research. Since the basis was randomized, patients were assigned either the mHealth group with FOCUS or the clinic therapy with WRAP. Scientists took about 2 months to ascertain which worked the best and compare the details and outcomes of both.

FOCUS is a recently launched cell-phone based venture for every person who has serious mental disorders. The app consists of major three aspects- the FOCUS app, a clinician dashboard, and support from a mHealth specialist. The app includes basic assessment prompts along with some content that is viewable for 24 hours a day.

Apart from that, the patient has to respond to the self-assessment strategy every day which is then transferred to the physicians. Weekly calls are also made to analyze the progress and estimate the recovery of patients.

WRAP, a clinic-based therapy for mentally ill individuals which contains experts from the field to analyze the situation of patients. Recovery concepts are focused on usage of various intervention tools aided to the patient by experts like Hope, Self-confidence etc.

It was analyzed that more FOCUS participants were indulged in the study up to 8 weeks, with the results being same for both FOCUS & WRAP after 12 weeks. High satisfaction along with better lifestyle was felt by both the groups.

Mobile applications are the main focus in the field of medical science in these days.

In a similar manner, another innovation was studied by the WHO regarding the condition of mentally ill people. The study was entirely based on searching appropriate applications that could help mentally-ill people in any possible way.

Mood tools, mood kit, Icbt app were some of the featured application found helping mentally disoriented individuals. Technology, when merged with medical science, can do wonders and these are well-sorted examples of this.

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