NAMI’s Ask the Expert Webinar: What to Know Before Using a Mental Health App

There are over 10,000 apps targeting mental health conditions available for download and use today. These apps are appealing tools in today’s challenging times — they’re easy to access and low cost. But some apps can be dangerous, and others steal your health data. Many just waste your time and are simply not effective.

Mental health apps offer a range of possibilities for treatment: symptom monitoring, therapy-inspired exercises, psychoeducation and a connection to a clinician or peer. Although an app can be useful in care, it’s important to be cautious about which app you use.

This webinar will introduce evidence-based approaches to evaluating apps with examples from the American Psychiatric Association’s app evaluation framework and hands-on demonstrations using the APA team’s evolving app database. Learn how to find the app that best matches your needs.

Our Expert

John Torous, M.D. is Director of the Digital Psychiatry Division in the Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School-affiliated teaching hospital, where he also serves as a staff psychiatrist and academic faculty. He has a background in electrical engineering and computer sciences and received an undergraduate degree in the field from UC Berkeley before attending medical school at UC San Diego. He completed his psychiatry residency, fellowship in clinical informatics, and master’s degree in biomedical informatics at Harvard.

Dr. Torous is active in investigating the potential of mobile mental health technologies for psychiatry and has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and five book chapters on the topic. His work focuses on developing free digital mental health tools and apps, teaching digital health literacy skills and using technology to predict and prevent relapse.

Dr. Torous serves as the SMI Technology Expert on the Core Clinical Team for the SAMHSA funded SMI Adviser project.

Read the Transcript

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