CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 71Digital Mental Health InterventionsSuicide and Self-Harm StudiesMobile Health and mHealth Applications

Testing an App-Assisted Treatment for Suicide Prevention in a Randomized Controlled Trial: Effects on Suicide Risk and Depression

Open access
O'Toole, Mia S., Arendt, Mikkel B., Pedersen, Christian M.·2019·Behavior Therapy
DOI 10.1016/j.beth.2018.07.007
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Suicide is a global public health problem and effective psychological interventions are needed. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the effect of an app-assisted suicide prevention treatment on suicide risk and depression. One hundred twenty-nine participants were randomized to treatment as usual (TAU), consisting of psychotherapy adhering to the framework of Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS), with (TAU+APP, N = 60) or without (TAU, N = 69) access to a mobile application (i.e., LifeApp'tite). Suicide risk and symptoms of depression were assessed pre- and posttherapy, and at 4-month follow-up. The TAU+APP group showed a smaller decrease on self-reported suicide risk at the end of treatment, corresponding to a medium between-group effect size (p = .008, d = 0.46). At the 4-month follow-up this was the case only at the trend level, where the effect size was also of a smaller magnitude (p = .057, d = 0.30). No differences between the treatment groups were observed on self-reported depressive symptoms, either immediately following treatment (p = .732, d = 0.05) or at follow-up (p = .467, d = 0.11). The unexpected negative effect concerning suicide risk points to crucial consideration of issues pertaining to timing, dosing, and content when adding new technology to existing treatments both in this and other populations.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.beth.2018.07.007

Cites

38 of 39 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Internet-based interventions have not been shown to prevent suicidal behavior, and only 3 of 10 studies reported benefit for suicidal ideation.

    “Internet-based interventions have not been shown to prevent suicidal behavior (Table S5) but are highly scalable. Only 3/10 studies reported benefit for suicidal ideation(117–123) (Table S5).”

    From Improving Suicide Prevention Through Evidence-Based Strategies: A Systematic Review (2021) · cites this paper as [118]

    The introduction (manuscript p. 5) reports that a game-like app significantly reduced suicidal behaviors, although the effect was not maintained at one month. That contradicts the categorical claim that internet-based interventions have not been shown to prevent suicidal behavior. The paper does not report a tally of benefits in 3 of 10 studies of suicidal ideation. (LLM, conf=0.84)

    Checked by a reasoning model — may be wrong.

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Alternative metrics such as number of clicks were reported in only 1 of the reviewed studies [36].

    “but this was only the case in 1 of the reviewed studies [36].”

    From Digital Mental Health Interventions for Depression: Scoping Review of User Engagement (2022) · cites this paper as [36]

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
O'Toole, M. S., Arendt, M. B., & Pedersen, C. M.
Affiliations
Aarhus University Hospital (DK)
ORCID
Pedersen, Christian M.
Venue
Behavior Therapy
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2019-03
Volume
50
Issue
2
Pages
421-429
ISSN
0005-7894 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.beth.2018.07.007
OpenAlex
W2885214120
Cited by
71
References
38
Citations by year
2025: 10 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 4
FWCI
5.99
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Behavior Therapy (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Digital Mental Health Interventions
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Suicide and Self-Harm Studies
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Mobile Health and mHealth Applications
Keywords
suicide prevention, mobile health apps, digital mental health interventions, suicide risk, depressive symptoms, Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality, psychotherapy, treatment effects
MeSH terms
Suicide Prevention, Adolescent, Adult, Depression, Female, Humans, Male, Psychotherapy, Risk Factors, Suicide, Self-Injurious Behavior, Treatment Outcome, Mobile Applications

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review