In a new study from Northwestern Medicine, researchers developed a mental health smartphone app to help improve depressive symptoms in patients with diabetes and high blood pressure.
The findings suggest that using such digital mental health interventions may help treat depressive symptoms more effectively than standard care alone.
Depression is a leading contributor to disease burden globally, especially in low- and middle-income countries, and has been commonly linked to the development of diabetes and heart disease.
Depression can increase a lot of unhealthy behaviors, such as increased smoking, unhealthy eating, or decreasing physical activity, which can impact diabetes and heart disease.
Depression affects immune and endocrine function in ways that can have adverse effects on disease processes, so there are potentially both direct as well as indirect pathways through behavior
While the use of digital mental health interventions has increased over time, their effectiveness in reducing depressive symptoms in this patient population has remained understudied.
In the study, the team provided a mental health smartphone app called CONEMO to patients with hypertension and diabetes.
The app’s design is based on the principles of behavioral activation, a common behavior therapy framework for treating depression.
It connected patients to a team of healthcare providers in their respective countries through the app’s main dashboard.
Patients were randomized to receive standard care or CONEMO via a provided smartphone for six weeks.
After a three-month follow-up period, the t team found that more patients who used CONEMO saw a 50% decrease in their overall depressive symptoms, compared to patients who received standard care alone.
The team says the app is a tool for self-management and is also connecting people with a human inside the care system and that’s important. They plan to extend the treatment and follow-up period in future work.
If you care about depression, please read studies about depression could be a cause of 20 major diseases and findings of common depression drug may reduce anxiety more than depressive symptoms.
For more information about depression treatment and prevention, please see recent studies about your gut bacteria may be linked to depression, high blood pressure and results showing that these drugs may effectively and safely reduce depression symptoms.
The study is published in JAMA. One author of the study is David Mohr, Ph.D.
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