Preliminary Evaluation of an Indigenous Mental Health App for Indian Users

Background The digital health sector has witnessed significant growth in recent years. There are many mental health apps available in virtual stores for Indian users; however, there is a dearth of research on the same. The present study aimed at a preliminary examination of the usability, acceptability, and perceived gains of an indigenously developed app (MindNotes, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, Bengaluru, India) for common mental health concerns. Method A short-term prospective design was employed. A sample of 190 community participants completed a baseline survey and were suggested to explore the app for two weeks. The baseline survey examined self-reports of current common mental health concerns, their duration and perceived severity, and their commitment to try the app during the study period. The inclination to seek help from a mental health professional was inquired into using a seven-point Likert scale. A post-assessment survey was conducted in the third week to capture the extent of app exploration, frequency of usage, and ratings of the participants on perceived usefulness, engaging nature, ease of navigation, likelihood of future use, and recommending the app to others. The item on inclination to seek help from a mental health professional was repeated. Perceived gains were examined through responses to a checklist. In addition to descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages for identifying patterns of responses to various items, correlational analysis was used to examine relationships between ease of navigation and the engaging nature of the app with the extent of exploration and the likelihood of future use of the app. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to examine the difference in the extent of app exploration between subgroups with varying levels of baseline commitment to use the app, while the Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to examine changes in help-seeking inclination from baseline to post-assessment. Predictors of help-seeking inclination at post-assessment were examined through a hierarchical regression analysis. Result Based on the responses to the survey items, the app was found to be easy to navigate and engaging by 83 (76.2%) and 84 (77.1%) participants, respectively, and received moderate to high ratings from 95 participants (87.2%) on perceived usefulness. The extent of app exploration significantly predicted improvement in help-seeking inclination at post-assessment in a subgroup of participants reporting common mental health concerns. Conclusion The findings of this preliminary study support the usability, potential usefulness, and acceptability of MindNotes, a multi-module mental health app for common mental health concerns developed for Indian users. There is a high treatment gap for common mental health problems in India, which is partly attributable to various barriers to seeking professional help, including stigma. The study results suggest that the MindNotes app may have utility in improving the inclination to seek professional help in individuals experiencing common mental health concerns and thereby may serve as one of the approaches to address the treatment gap.