Introducing Mental Health Apps

Mental health apps (MHapps) are designed to provide digital tools and techniques for self-managing psychological forms of distress (e.g. stress and anxiety). In a psychological context, the powerpower and efficacy of these apps is typically evidenced using clinical methods (e.g. randomized controlled trialsrandomized controlled trials). This chapter will describe the benefits and challenges to using these methods and will then examine the advances that can be made by considering an applied psychosocial approach to understanding MHapps. This will explore the ways people negotiate the emotional and affective landscape of these apps, considering how MHapps allow for certain ways of thinking, acting, and feelingfeeling. This follows a vital materialist perspective and aims to recognize how the lived material experience of using MHapps shapes (and is shaped) by the intersection of a range of different bodiesbodies (both human and non-human) in the unique space of MHapps.