Classification of Digital Mental Health Interventions: A Rapid Review and Framework Proposal

The modern context of mental health interventions asks for an inclusion of digital solutions to the face-to-face approach, providing better access and reduced inequity for patients. The current classification of digital mental health interventions can be system specific (mobile apps) or general (virtual therapy), which causes inadequacy in applications. The goal of this study was to develop a framework to improve digital mental health interventions classification. We performed a rapid review of the literature on existing digital mental health interventions frameworks. We identified four existing frameworks, extracted their purpose, categories and items, completed a thematic analysis and formulated a four domains framework proposal. This framework allows to classify digital mental health interventions on their system, function, time and facilitation, which should facilitate our understanding of the effect of singular characteristics on patient outcomes.