Mobile Mental Health: A Review of Applications for Depression Assistance

Depression is a mental disorder characterized by persistent sadness, loss of interest, and a set of behavioral changes. The high prevalence of depression imposes a significant burden on the world population, demanding methods capable of monitoring and treating this mental disorder. Currently, a large number of mobile applications have been designed to provide support to depressive people. This paper aims to identify, analyze and characterize the current state of mobile applications focused on depression. To do so, we conducted a systematic review of applications for depression assistance. The two most popular mobile app stores (Google Play Store and Apple App Store) have been explored to find the most relevant apps. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria and performing the quality assessment of the results, 216 applications were selected for the data extraction phase, where we summarized their benefits and limitations and identified gaps and trends. The results of this review evidenced that there is a growth in the diversity of apps' purposes such as chatbot, online therapy, educational tools, mood tracker, testing, and self-help.