Innovations in Digital Mental Health - Podcast | Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA

Mental Health Apps - Digital Mental Health

Audio File

ADAA sits down with ADAA Members Emily E. Bernstein, PhD and Nicholas C. Jacobson, PhD to discuss what app-based therapies and the ongoing research in digital mental health.

If we are using an app, what does it mean for that app based therapy to be guided versus not guided?

When it's not guided, it's sort of like a self help book where you would download an app and go through the treatment from start to finish on your own. What it means for an app based therapy to be guided is a little more complicated. Most basically, it means that there's a live person involved in some way, trying to help you work through therapy and see better outcomes.

Emily E. Bernstein, PhD

Emily Bernstein completed her doctorate in clinical psychology at Harvard University and is now a Hope Fellow in psychology with the Center for OCD and Related Disorders (CORD) at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Her research centers on transdiagnostic mechanisms in the development and treatment of emotional disorders. Her work focuses on identifying modifiable causal mechanisms contributing to emotion dysregulation and developing novel interventions (e.g., brief interventions, digital tools, and health behaviors) to target these processes.

Nicholas C. Jacobson, PhD

Dr. Nick Jacobson is an assistant professor in the departments of Biomedical Data Science, Psychiatry, and Computer Science within the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health in the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. He directs the AI and Mental Health: Innovation in Technology Guided Healthcare (AIM HIGH) Laboratory. Dr. Jacobson researches the use of technology to enhance both the assessment and treatment of anxiety and depression. His work has focused on (1) enhancing precision assessment of anxiety and depression using intensive longitudinal data, (2) conducting multimethod assessment utilizing passive sensor data from smartphones and wearable devices, and (3) providing scalable, personalized technology-based treatments utilizing smartphones. He has a strong interest in creating personalized just-in-time adaptive interventions and the quantitative tools that make this work possible.