Persuasive Design Principles in Mental Health Apps: A Qualitative Analysis of User Reviews

Mental illnesses are a major cause of disease burden in all countries around the world. Among the available treatments, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) based mental health applications (apps) have been introduced as promising in helping people deal with common mental illnesses by themselves. However, the theoretical underpinnings for technological approaches used to design these interventions have not been clarified. Based on the literature and its relevance to CBT, theories of Persuasive Technology could be potentially used as a suitable approach to design. However, an embrace of persuasive technology has not been widely studied, particularly from the user's perspectives. Therefore, this study has evaluated and explored the user's perception on the persuasiveness of mental health apps by conducting a qualitative analysis of user reviews. The findings of this study will contribute to the designers in developing highly persuasive mental health apps. The results indicated that where the principles of the persuasive systems design (PSD) model were integrated into the design, users expressed satisfaction with the design.