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Digital Technologies in the Treatment of Anxiety: Recent Innovations and Future Directions

  • Anxiety Disorders (A Pelissolo, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose of Review

This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the efficacy, limitations, and future of e-health treatments for anxiety. Within this, we provide detail on “first-generation” e-health approaches, such as computerized therapies. Additionally, we assess the emergence and early efficacy of newer methods of treatment delivery, including smartphone apps and virtual reality interventions, discussing the potential and pitfalls for each.

Recent Findings

There is now substantial clinical research demonstrating the efficacy of internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy in the treatment of anxiety. However, the ability of these interventions for engaging patients in “real-world” settings is unclear. Recently, smartphone apps for anxiety have presented a more popular and ubiquitous method of intervention delivery, although the evidence base supporting these newer approaches drastically falls behind the extensive marketing and commercialization efforts currently driving their development. Meanwhile, the increasing availability of novel technologies, such as “virtual reality” (VR), introduces further potential of e-health treatments for generalized anxiety and anxiety-related disorders such as phobias and obsessive compulsive disorder, while also creating additional challenges for research.

Summary

Although still in its infancy, e-health research is already presenting several promising avenues for delivering effective and scalable treatments for anxiety. Nonetheless, several important steps must be taken in order for academic research to keep pace with continued technological advances.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NICM Health Research Institute, University of Western Sydney, Campbelltown, Sydney, NSW, 2560, Australia

    Joseph Firth & Jerome Sarris

  2. Division of Psychology and Mental Health, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Joseph Firth & Rebekah Carney

  3. Department of Psychiatry and Division of Clinical Informatics, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    John Torous

  4. Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    John Torous

  5. Youth Mental Health Research Unit, Greater Manchester West Mental Health Foundation Trust, Manchester, UK

    Rebekah Carney

  6. School of Psychology, Faculty of Science, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Jill Newby

  7. Gerontology Research Centre, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

    Theodore D. Cosco

  8. Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Theodore D. Cosco

  9. Black Dog Institute, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Helen Christensen

  10. School of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Helen Christensen

  11. Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Professorial Unit, The Melbourne Clinic, Melbourne, Australia

    Jerome Sarris

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  1. Joseph Firth
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joseph Firth.

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Conflict of Interest

Joseph Firth is supported by a Blackmores Institute Fellowship.

John Torous is supported by a NARSAD Young Investigator Award from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation and a Dupont Warren Fellowship from the Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry.

Rebekah Carney each declare no potential conflicts of interest.

Theodore D. Cosco is supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Postdoctoral Fellowship (MFE-146676) and holds equity in Eos Analytics Ltd.

Helen Christensen is funded by a NHMRC John Cade Fellowships (1056964).

Jerome Sarris is supported by an NHMRC Research Fellowship (1125000).

Jill Newby is supported by a NHMRC/MRFF Career Development Fellowship (1145382).

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

John Torous is the co-first author.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Anxiety Disorders

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Firth, J., Torous, J., Carney, R. et al. Digital Technologies in the Treatment of Anxiety: Recent Innovations and Future Directions. Curr Psychiatry Rep 20, 44 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-018-0910-2

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