Personality and Engagement with Digital Mental Health Interventions

Abstract

Personalisation is key to creating successful digital health applications. Recent evidence links personality and preference for digital experience — suggesting that psychometric traits can be a promising basis for personalisation of digital mental health services. However, there is still little quantitative evidence from actual app usage. In this study, we explore how different personality types engage with different intervention content in a commercial mental health application. Specifically, we collected the Big Five personality traits alongside the app usage data of 126 participants using a mobile mental health app for seven days. We found that personality traits significantly correlate with the engagement and user ratings of different intervention content. These findings open a promising research avenue that can inform the personalised delivery of digital mental health content and the creation of recommender systems, ultimately improving the effectiveness of mental health interventions.