Abstract
As the prevalence of mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety continues to grow, clinicians have turned to mobile applications as tools for aiding and supporting their patients’ treatment. These applications can be especially helpful for teenagers and young adults suffering from mental illness due to their frequent use of technology as a means of communication. Depression is the fourth frequent cause of death. It can affect almost anybody, including children. In most cases non-pharmacological treatment is preferred since it is less invasive, has fewer side-effects and sometimes it is also less expensive. The paper aims to explore the effectiveness of the use of mobile applications, which is demonstrated clinically and consequently, the focus is also put on the criteria evaluating the quality, strengths and weaknesses of current mobile health applications. The results show that clinical trials confirm some positive effects of mobile applications, however the evidence is rather low and further monitoring is needed.
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The paper was written with the support of the specific project grant “Economics and Managerial aspects in Biomedicine” granted by the University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic.
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Maresova, P., Klimova, B. (2018). Non-pharmacological Approaches in the Depression Treatment - Strengths and Weaknesses of Mobile Applications Use. In: Oliver, N., Serino, S., Matic, A., Cipresso, P., Filipovic, N., Gavrilovska, L. (eds) Pervasive Computing Paradigms for Mental Health. FABULOUS MindCare IIOT 2016 2016 2015. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 207. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74935-8_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74935-8_10
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