From breathing exercises to guided meditation, millions of people have downloaded mental health apps. But an analysis suggests that almost everyone gives up on such apps within just two weeks of downloading them, raising questions about how useful they really are.
Amit Baumel at the University of Haifa in Israel and his colleagues used data analytics software to study the use of 93 popular mental health apps. The software wasn’t able to determine when individual users stopped using an app, but did count the number of people who used the apps each day. From this, the team was able to calculate how quickly people stop using mental health apps.
The data showed that after 15 days, more than 94 per cent of users had stopped opening their apps. Baumel says that he expected to see a decline in app use but was surprised by how steep it was.
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There are thousands of mental health apps available, so the team focused on only those available in English that have been installed at least 10,000 times via the Google Play store.
App use also differed depending on the kind of support the products provide. On any given day, just over 4 per cent of people who have downloaded mindfulness and meditation apps will use them. But this figure is 17 per cent among those who had installed peer-support apps, which enable you to talk to someone who may be experiencing similar issues.
Abandoning apps
The team hasn’t revealed which 93 apps were included in the analysis, but the findings raise questions over how useful mental health apps are. Baumel says we don’t yet know how often one needs to use such apps for them to be effective.
He also suggests that the future of these apps lies in them becoming more personalised to users and their specific needs. The relatively higher engagement rate of peer-support apps imply that a personal connection can keep people coming back.
John Torous at Harvard Medical School says the study confirms what the clinical community has known for a long time: a lot of people abandon these apps.
A spokesperson for the mindfulness app Headspace says the firm is improving engagement by allowing users to set daily reminders and by co-opting the “run-streaks” made popular by Snapchat.
Derek Richards, chief scientist for the mental health app SilverCloud, says a low engagement rate doesn’t necessarily mean mental health apps don’t work. Instead, it could be an indication of how curious people are about these apps, and how easy it is to download them.
Journal of Medical Internet Research
