Can apps be a new way to cure mental disorders?

Not yet, according to psychiatrists who spoke at the annual American Psychiatric Association convention on Monday, May 16, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Of approximately 40,000 smartphone health apps available, about 800 are devoted to mental health, according to Robert Kennedy, MD, Executive Director of the American Association for Technology in Psychiatry. However, few of these apps are developed by clinicians, and there is little science to the vast majority of them, said Seth Powsner, MD, President of the AATP, and Professor of Psychiatry at Yale. Clinicians need to be at the forefront of app development, said John Luo, MD, Chief Informatics Officer at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine.