Designing smartphone mental health applications for emergency service workers

Abstract

Background: Emergency service workers are often exposed to trauma and have increased risk of a range of mental health (MH) conditions. Smartphone applications have the potential to provide this group with effective psychological interventions; however, little is known about the acceptability and preferences regarding such initiatives.

Aims: To describe the preferences and opinions of emergency service workers regarding the use of smartphone MH applications and to examine the impact of age on these preferences.

Methods: Participants were recruited from four metropolitan Fire and Rescue NSW stations and responded to questionnaire items covering three key domains: current smartphone use, potential future use and preferences for design and content as well as therapeutic techniques.

Results: Overall, approximately half the sample (n = 106) claimed they would be interested in trying a tailored emergency-worker MH smartphone application. There were few differences between age groups on preferences. The majority of respondents claimed they would use an app for mental well-being daily and preferred terms such as 'well-being' and 'mental fitness' for referring to MH. Confidentiality, along with a focus on stress, sleep, exercise and resiliency were all considered key features. Behavioural therapeutic techniques were regarded most favourably, compared with other therapies.

Conclusions: Emergency workers were interested in utilizing smartphone applications focused on MH, but expressed clear preferences regarding language used in promotion, features required and therapeutic techniques preferred.

Keywords: Apps; design features; emergency workers; fire fighters; first responders; mHealth; mental health; smartphones.