Psychiatric Annals, 2019;49(8):348–352
Abstract
Advances in technology are changing the ways cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) can be delivered. Through mobile technologies, effective interventions exist that allow people to receive CBT without ever visiting a practitioner's office. Additionally, mobile technologies are increasingly entering practitioners' offices, combining technological and human elements to create hybrid forms of care. Although clinical research has demonstrated exciting possibilities for mobile technologies to deliver and support CBT, for the most part clinical practice has been unchanged. We provide an overview of mobile CBT tools used either to deliver or to support CBT, highlighting what works and noting current limitations of our understanding. We also discuss new avenues in mobile CBT that leverage peers, artificial intelligence and chatbots, and mobile sensing to create scalable, personalized, and context-aware interventions. The future of mobile CBT should not be confined to digitizing current practices but should leverage technological affordances to improve CBT as it exists today. [Psychiatr Ann. 2019;49(8):348–352.]
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