Marketplace April 19, 2022
There’s about 20,000 mental health apps out there today, but they can vary in terms of quality, data privacy and more.
Accessing mental health care has long been difficult, and the pandemic has further increased the strain. And there are thousands of mental health apps — about 20,000 and counting — designed to tackle the problem.
They range from mood trackers, guided mindfulness exercises and apps with chatbots that teach coping skills. Spending on them has grown quickly since 2019 and is predicted to reach about $500 million this year, according to a report from Deloitte.
But not all these apps are backed by science. Stephen Schueller is a professor of psychological science at University of California, Irvine, and the...