The study reviewed the evidence on digital health interventions of young people between the ages of 10 and 24, with a focus on effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and generalizability in low-resource settings, like low- and middle-income countries.
Seven things to know about the study’s findings:
- Around 1 in 5 adolescents experience a mental health disorder each year, but due to barriers in accessing and seeking care, most remain undiagnosed and untreated.
- More than 2 million web-based mental health apps have been developed in recent years to address a range of mental health issues.
- Digital interventions can be effective in supplementing traditional mental health treatment, but only a small portion of existing digital health platforms are evidence-based.
- Digital health technologies have the potential for addressing mental health in a cost-effective manner among children and young adults.
- There is evidence on the effectiveness of using digital cognitive behavioral therapy to treat anxiety and depression, but the effectiveness of other digital mental health interventions remain inconclusive.
- Despite the potential digital interventions have for increasing accessibility, there has been no study that has reported sample-specific metrics focused on low-resource settings.
- Interventions that had an in-person element with a professional, peer or parent were more effective, increased adherence and had lower dropout rates than fully automatized or self-administered interventions.
