This chapter presents and discusses the results of a survey on psychological self-care apps (PsiApps), conducted between 2019 and 2022 by MediaLab, UFRJ. In the first stage, we mapped the 10 most popular and relevant mental health apps in Brazil, analyzing their discourses, promises, and tools, as well as investigating data ecosystem these apps integrate and feed. The second stage consisted of a case study on Cíngulo, the most widely used “digital therapy” app in the country, based on the analysis of comments on Google Play Store and the simulation of a user journey. The results of the survey point to a reconfiguration of therapeutic culture, marked both by the datafication of mental health and the increasing individualization of psychological care. The PsiApps analyzed, especially Cíngulo, promote a model of self-care centered on the individual and anchored in ideals of autonomy, speed, ease, and optimization, echoing a neoliberal model of subjectivity that “does everything on its own.” Paradoxically, this promise of autonomy is accompanied by a total lack of knowledge by part of users of the sociotechnical infrastructure that supports these applications and the processes of data collection, analysis and sharing. We thus seek to show how such applications, far from being neutral instruments, are effective mediators of health care practices, acting on the meanings that such practices assume, the type of therapeutic culture that they feed, and the sociotechnical and economic dynamics to which they are linked.

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PsiApps: Recoding Therapeutic Culture

  • Fernanda Bruno,
  • Paula Cardoso Pereira,
  • Helena Strecker,
  • Paulo Faltay

摘要

This chapter presents and discusses the results of a survey on psychological self-care apps (PsiApps), conducted between 2019 and 2022 by MediaLab, UFRJ. In the first stage, we mapped the 10 most popular and relevant mental health apps in Brazil, analyzing their discourses, promises, and tools, as well as investigating data ecosystem these apps integrate and feed. The second stage consisted of a case study on Cíngulo, the most widely used “digital therapy” app in the country, based on the analysis of comments on Google Play Store and the simulation of a user journey. The results of the survey point to a reconfiguration of therapeutic culture, marked both by the datafication of mental health and the increasing individualization of psychological care. The PsiApps analyzed, especially Cíngulo, promote a model of self-care centered on the individual and anchored in ideals of autonomy, speed, ease, and optimization, echoing a neoliberal model of subjectivity that “does everything on its own.” Paradoxically, this promise of autonomy is accompanied by a total lack of knowledge by part of users of the sociotechnical infrastructure that supports these applications and the processes of data collection, analysis and sharing. We thus seek to show how such applications, far from being neutral instruments, are effective mediators of health care practices, acting on the meanings that such practices assume, the type of therapeutic culture that they feed, and the sociotechnical and economic dynamics to which they are linked.