Housing, hotels, dining out, dating — there’s an app for that. And now there’s an app for mental health. Many, in fact.
But a technology-based approach to treating serious issues like anxiety and depression may be distracting us from the very thing that would help the most: each other. Digital Trends Magazine estimates that American spend an average of 4.7 hours per day on their smartphones. This everyday reliance on digital technology has even begun to affect the fields of psychotherapy and psychiatry.
Talking with a therapist or mentor has two key benefits an app can’t provide: empathy and accountability. An app can be ignored much more easily than a scheduled meeting with another person, and recording struggles or failures in an app is not as impactful as admitting them to another person. Additionally, the emotional support provided during such meetings is essential for creating a beneficial interpersonal relationship.
“An app can’t say ‘geez, that must be really difficult for you,’” said Brock Lutz, director of health services. “Whether interpersonal contact comes from a counselor, a coach, a pastor — being able to look at another person and tell them what’s going on is important.”
While instant-messaging therapy apps can be a good first step for getting help in severe cases, such as those who suffer from social anxiety, substituting virtual chat rooms for in-person meetings can diminish one of the most important part of a therapy session: building a trusting, interpersonal relationship.
“What we don’t want to do is think that we can deal with our problems in a vacuum,” Lutz said. “We live in a culture that doesn’t like to reflect much, so taking the time to do that can be really important — both with another person, and on our own.”
Other types of therapy-oriented apps focus on mindfulness techniques such as deep breathing or identifying mood and emotions. These are useful, important skills for anyone to have, especially those struggling with an illness such as anxiety or depression. However, a stand-alone coaching app often can’t provide a context for the therapeutic exercise.
“I will coach people on how to take deep breaths, and then recommend the app,” Lutz said. “I explain the physiology behind proper deep breathing — taking diaphragmatic breaths through the nose, and blowing out the air through the mouth. It’s actually the breathing out through the mouth that activates the parasympathetic nervous system and triggers stress release. The app doesn’t really explain that part of it.”
While the apps can reinforce positive habits and serve as an initial gateway to get interpersonal help, they ultimately fail to provide the accountability and human connection found in a conversation with a counselor.
While it may appear that the solution is at our fingertips, the shortcomings of apps in the field of mental health may be a good reason to think twice before we tap the screen to start downloading that app.
