Digital Health Interventions in Prevention, Relapse, and Therapy of Mild and Moderate Depression: Scoping Review

Abstract

Background Depression is a major cause for disability worldwide, and digital health interventions are expected to be an augmentative and effective treatment. According to the fast-growing field of information and communication technologies and its dissemination, there is a need for mapping the technological landscape and its benefits for users. Objective The purpose of this scoping review was to give an overview of the digital health interventions used for depression. The main goal of this review was to provide a comprehensive review of the system landscape and its technological state and functions, as well as its evidence and benefits for users. Methods A scoping review was conducted to provide a comprehensive overview of the field of digital health interventions for the treatment of depression. PubMed, PSYNDEX, and the Cochrane Library were searched by two independent researchers in October 2020 to identify relevant publications of the last 10 years, which were examined using the inclusion and exclusion criteria. To conduct the review, we used Rayyan, a freely available web tool. Results In total, 65 studies were included in the qualitative synthesis. After categorizing the studies into the areas of prevention, early detection, therapy, and relapse prevention, we found dominant numbers of studies in the area of therapy (n=52). There was only one study for prevention, 5 studies for early detection, and 7 studies for relapse prevention. The most dominant therapy approaches were cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and problem-solving therapy. Most of the studies revealed significant effects of digital health interventions when cognitive behavioral therapy was applied. Cognitive behavioral therapy as the most dominant form was often provided through web-based systems. Combined interventions consisting of web-based and smartphone-based approaches are increasingly found. Conclusions Digital health interventions for treating depression are quite comprehensive. There are different interventions focusing on different fields of care. While most interventions can be beneficial to achieve a better depression treatment, it can be difficult to determine which approaches are suitable. Cognitive behavioral therapy through digital health interventions has shown good effects in the treatment of depression, but treatment for depression still stays very individualistic.

Guided Internet-Delivered Treatment for Depression: Scoping Review

“…In therapist-guided internet-delivered treatment, additional guidance and support are provided by therapists, coaches, or other professionals over the internet via chats, emails, and telephone [14][15][16]. In unguided treatment programs, the patients usually have access to the treatment content, and some programs provide automated prewritten feedback.…”

“…In previously published reviews and meta-analyses on internet-delivered treatment for depression, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been the most prevalent methodological design [11,[14][15][16]. Etzelmueller et al [10] reviewed guided internet-delivered CBT focusing only on nonrandomized pre-post designs to evaluate the intervention effectiveness in a clinical setting and found evidence of both acceptability and effectiveness.…”

Web-Based Interventions to Help Australian Adults Address Depression, Anxiety, Suicidal Ideation, and General Mental Well-being: Scoping Review

“…Clinicians have also indicated that it would be useful to include web-based interventions for adults seeking help for general mental well-being and suicidal ideation, which are issues commonly encountered in clinical practice but not covered by past reviews. We note that many reviews of the evidence for web-based interventions for specific disorders (eg, depression [29][30][31]) and for specific populations (eg, adolescents and young adults [32,33]) have been undertaken in recent years. Although these are helpful for researchers and intervention developers, they are less likely to meet the practical information needs of consumers and clinicians, as many of the interventions contained in the reviews are not available outside research settings, and others that are publicly accessible, have not been evaluated and therefore are not included in the reviews.…”

Coaching to Support Mental Health Apps: Exploratory Narrative Review

“…We identified the trials using the 2019 review by Tønning et al [ 14 ] on the methodological challenges of randomized controlled trials on smartphone-based treatment in psychiatry and the 2021 scoping review by Tokgöz et al [ 15 ] on digital health interventions for depression. We selected these papers as they offered a recent and comprehensive sample of studies from which we could explore coaching.…”