AVATAR therapy: a promising new approach for persistent distressing voices

Abstract

As mHealth transitions towards medical care in the mental health field, now is the critical moment for researchers, clini\xad cians, service\xadusers, policy makers and funders to guide that transition and ensure that these tools meet rigorous standards, as is required of any novel therapeutic. Movement in this direction is taking place. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration has announced that it is moving away from evaluating individual apps, and focusing its regulatory ef\xad forts on the app makers. Additionally, US professional groups like the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association are creating app evaluation frameworks. In the UK, the National Health Service has recently re\xadopened the App Library in beta phase, providing recommendations for apps across a range of conditions including mental health, and the British Standards Institute has published standards for health app devel\xad opment. In the European Union, the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is actively developing standards for apps and other technology based behavioral change interventions. We thus make a final recommendation that these organiza\xad tions, and others, come together to set universal standards for mental health app quality control, and that those standards include at a minimum the review of data security, app effective\xad ness, usability, and data integration. John Torous, Gerhard Andersson, Andrew Bertagnoli, Helen Christensen, Pim Cuijpers, Joseph Firth, Adam Haim, Honor Hsin, Chris Hollis, Shôn Lewis, David C. Mohr, Abhishek Pratap, Spencer Roux, Joel Sherrill, Patricia A. Arean Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden and Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; Optum, Eden Prairie, MN, USA; Black Dog Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia; Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia; University of Manchester, Manchester, UK; National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, USA; Verily Life Sciences, South San Francisco, CA, USA; University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK; Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA; University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA