Cognitive training for mental health problems

The persistent gap between need and access for evidence-based mental health care has spurred interest in the development of disseminable, efficacious and cost-effective approaches as stand-alone and adjunctive interventions. Computerized cognitive trainings, which originated primarily in the experimental psychopathology literature, have gained much attention as a possible approach to addressing this need–access gap. In this Perspective we describe the current state of the literature on computerized cognitive training interventions for psychopathology. Drawing on long-standing principles from learning theory and cognitive psychology, we discuss several reasons why many of these interventions (for example, cognitive bias modification) have not yet achieved their considerable potential as cost-effective, scalable and effective digital therapeutics. We also explore distinguishing features that may help to explain why some computerized cognitive training programs (for example, cognitive remediation) tend to show more robust effects than others. Finally, we leverage insights across basic and applied branches of psychology to offer concrete recommendations for building more robustly effective digital interventions moving forward.