Mobile Health

Mobile Health – A Valuable Tool in Addressing Mental Health

Written by Connor Prewitt

Mental health plays a significant role in living a productive and enjoyable life. According to Kessler, Amminger, Aguilar-Gaxiola, Alonso, Lee, and Üstün (2007), 75% of all individuals who have will have a mental health disorder during their lives have experienced their first onset by the age of 25 years old (Kessler et al., 2007). As a result, many individuals begin to deal with mental health while enrolled in college universities. In fact, according to the 2008 National College Health Assessment sponsored by the American College Health Association, more than one third of all undergraduate respondents said that they felt, “so depressed it was difficult to function” during the previous year (Hunt & Eisenberg, 2010). 

Thankfully, counseling services are generally made available to students at college universities (Johnson & Kalkbrenner, 2017). However, only a small percentage of students who struggle with poor mental health ever utilize the resources made available to them by universities (Eisenberg et al., 2007). It appears to be necessary, then, to find better means to connect college students with the mental health related resources that are available to them, and to do so in a way that helps them to feel comfortable utilizing them. 

One way to do this could be through mobile health (mHealth). Mobile health, as defined by Clough and Casey (2015), is “any psychological or mental health intervention that is delivered or supported by the use of mobile technology, by means of a mobile phone or smartphone.” They go on to state that in order to be considered an mHealth intervention, a technological resource must also “enhance treatment or assessment, increase dissemination of interventions, or provide clinicians and clients with greater choice for accessing treatment materials or activities” (Clough & Casey, 2015).

The greatest advantage of this concept of reaching students through mobile health is the commonality of mobile phones. According to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, roughly 90% of all adults living in the United States own a mobile phone. Developing and sharing mental health resources that are accessible through technologies that are almost always possessed by college students will naturally be beneficial in helping them to find the resources they need. Secondary advantages include the ability for students to utilize cellphones to receive and transmit audio in various forms, thus, allowing for individuals to access resources and communicate with those working to help them from a far. Smartphones also come equipped with a nearly constant access to the internet (Clough & Casey, 2015). Finally, smartphones, which make up 58% of mobile phones in the United States (Pew Research Center, 2014) offer the ability to track a variety of things that could be beneficial to clinical researchers. This could eventually help those that work with college students suffering from mental health problems provide more around-the-clock aid to their clients (Clough & Casey, 2015). 

Researchers have stated that, for college students, being unaware of the mental health services available to them, feeling skepticism towards the effectiveness of mental health resources, and a lack of a perceived need for help all work to deter students from finding the help they need. Each of these reasons involve a lack of understanding on the hand of the students and each of these reasons can be addressed through the use of readily accessible, non-invasive information-based resources in the form of mobile health. Through this technology, students have the opportunity to learn about mental health without having to go into a public setting and converse with someone face-to-face. This technology would also allow for students who don't have the necessary resources around them to learn more, and perhaps put them in contact with the types of resources they do need, even from afar. Based on this research, it appears that by generating more mobile health content and informing college students to where they can find it may allow for more individuals to find useful resources from the privacy of their own homes.

Written by Connor Prewitt

References

Clough, B. A., & Casey, L. M. (2015) The smart therapist: A look to the future of smartphones and mHealth technologies in psychotherapy. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 46(3), 147–153. doi:10.1037/pro0000011

Eisenberg, D., Golberstein, E., & Gollust, S. (2007). Help-Seeking and Access to Mental Health Care in a University Student Population. Medical Care, 45(7), 594-601. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.prxy4.ursus.maine.edu/stable/40221479

Hunt, J., & Eisenberg, D. (2010). Mental Health Problems and Help-Seeking Behavior Among College Students. Journal of Adolescent Health, 46(1), 3-10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2009.08.008 

Johnson, K. F., & Kalkbrenner, M. T. (2017). The Utilization of Technological Innovations to Support College Student Mental Health: Mobile Health Communication. Journal of Technology in Human Services, 35(4), 314-339. https://doi-org.prxy4.ursus.maine.edu/10.1080/15228835.2017.1368428

Kessler, R., Amminger, P., Aguilar-Gaxiola, S., Alonso, J., Lee, S., & Üstün, B. (2007). Age of onset of mental disorders: a review of recent literature. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 20(4), 359-364. https://doi.org/10.1097/YCO.0b013e32816ebc8c 

Pew Research Center. (2014). Device ownership over time. Retrieved August 28, 2014 from http://www.pewinternet.org/data-trend/mobile/device-ownership/

We do not own the rights to this media | All media is labeled for reuse

All work is cited