Mental health clinicians’ perceptions and perceived challenges about recommending mental health apps to patients in Ethiopia

Introduction: Mobile health apps are becoming increasingly popular and are viewed as supplementary aids that simplify healthcare tasks, facilitate patient follow-up, monitor patient symptoms, and support self-care. Their utility may be essential in low-resource countries including Ethiopia. However, their accessibility, availability, trustworthiness, and credibility were identified as the main perceived challenges when recommending the app to patients. Objective: To explore mental healthcare professionals’ perceptions and perceived challenges about mental health apps for patients with depression and anxiety. Methods: Two focus group discussions were conducted with mental healthcare professionals (n = 14) from February 10–20, 2024, at Amanuel Mental Specialized Hospital in Ethiopia. The collected audio-recorded data were transcribed into text, coded, and then exported to NVivo version 14 for analysis. Results: A total of 14 multi-disciplinary mental health professionals participated in focus group discussions. The first focus group consisted of 8 study participants, and the second focus group comprised 6 participants. Most of the interviewed health professionals (12) were male. Four main themes were identified: (1) perceived benefit (improvement of patients’ well-being and mental health accessibility), (2) perceived alleviation of healthcare work burden, (3) perceived challenges (usability, accessibility, trustworthiness, credibility and effectiveness), and (4) suggested app features (psychoeducational, self-assessment and self-monitoring, self-care, multimedia and reminders). Conclusion: The involvement of mental health professionals is vital for the successful development of mobile mental health apps. App features such as psychoeducational, self-assessment, self-monitoring, self-care, multimedia, and reminders received positive feedback from healthcare professionals. However, participants expressed and perceived challenges about the app’s accessibility, availability, effectiveness, trustworthiness, and credibility.