Text messaging platforms in mental health computerised-based therapy: A review

Abstract

Mental health comprises emotional, psychological and social well-being. Global mental health problems have shown an increase in its statistics. Some psychotherapy approaches such as Internet-based therapy and mobile therapy have been carried out in clinical settings to improve one’s mental health conditions. The objective of this paper is to identify the different kinds of text messaging platforms that have been tested in mental health computerised-based therapy settings. This paper also aimed to identify the effectiveness of the text messaging platforms on different mental health problems specifically. The review considered five databases (Scopus, PubMed, ACM Digital Library, IEEE XPlore and Web of Science) for the article searching process. The retrieved articles were screened to fulfil the selection criteria including English and Malay language but exclude research protocols, proposals for a prototype application and literature reviews. The search resulted in 3656 articles but only 18 were selected for further review. It was found that web applications were the least used type of text messaging in mental health therapy, followed by mobile applications, whereas SMS was the most popular platform. Overall, the three text messaging platforms showed improvements in depression, anxiety, suicide risk, self-harm risk, mood, eating behaviour and alcohol intake. Mental health treatment through mobile therapy has the potential to help individuals with mental health problems. Suggested future directions for research community includes comparison between two or three types of text messaging platforms used in interventions to identify which platform is the most suitable to improve a particular mental health problem.