Feasibility and utility of mobile health interventions for depression and anxiety in rural populations: A scoping review

Michael J. McCarthy · Juliette K. Roddy · Mark W. Remiker · Indrakshi Roy · Megan C. McCoy · Eric Scott Cerino +1 more

21 citations0/0 files storedInternet Interventions

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Digital Mental Health Interventions Mental Health Treatment and Access Mobile Health and mHealth Applications

Abstract

Despite the potential of mobile health (mHealth) to address high rates of depression and anxiety in underserved rural communities, most mHealth interventions do not explicitly consider the realities of rural life. The aim of this scoping review is to identify and examine the available literature on mHealth interventions that consider the needs of rural populations in order to gauge their feasibility and utility for addressing depression and anxiety. Additionally, we provide an overview of rural users' perceptions about and preferences for mHealth-delivered mental health screening and intervention systems. Out of 169 articles identified, 16 met inclusion criteria. Studies were conducted across a wide range of countries, age groups, and rural subpopulations including individuals with bipolar disorder, anxiety, perinatal depression, PTSD, and chronic pain, as well as refugees, veterans, and transgender and LGBTQ+ individuals. All interventions were in the feasibility/acceptability testing stage for rural users. Identified strengths included their simplicity, accessibility, convenience, availability of support between sessions with providers, and remote access to a care team. Weaknesses included problems with charging phone batteries and exceeding data limits, privacy concerns, and general lack of comfort with app-based support. Based upon this review, we provide recommendations for future mHealth intervention development including the value of developer-user coproduction methods, the need to consider user variation in access to and comfort with smartphones, and potential data or connectivity limitations, mental health stigma, and confidentiality concerns in rural communities.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 21 citations exist upstream.

References

2001The PHQ-9 2018PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR): Checklist and Explanation 2015The WHO-5 Well-Being Index: A Systematic Review of the Literature 2008A systematic review of mental disorder, suicide, and deliberate self harm in lesbian, gay and bisexual people 2015Screening for anxiety disorders with the GAD-7 and GAD-2: a systematic review and diagnostic metaanalysis 2016Undertreatment of people with major depressive disorder in 21 countries 2020Transdiagnostic approaches to mental health problems: Current status and future directions.2010Issues and Challenges in the Design of Culturally Adapted Evidence-Based Interventions

Cited by

2024Comprehensive synthesis of mHealth interventions in psychiatry: insights from systematic, scoping, narrative reviews and content analysis 2024Factors Influencing the Engagement with Electronic Mental Health Technologies: A Systematic Review of Reviews

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.