Effectiveness of a mental health mobile application for the academic community: A Longitudinal Study

Research on technology-based interventions for mental health continues to establish its significance within the landscape of mental health services. Evidence has shown positive modest effects of using mental health applications on various mental health outcomes. This study explores the effectiveness of the Social Activity Guardian and Intervention Project (SAGIP) mental health mobile application designed for the University of the Philippines academic community. Using an experimental repeated measures design, the effectiveness of using the SAGIP app was evaluated over a 6-month period. This research compared participants from the experimental group (users of the SAGIP app) and the control group (non-users of the SAGIP app) while analyzing the interplay among different target variables like app usage, psychological distress scores, and psychological well-being scores. The mixed analysis of variance showed a significant difference between the experimental group and the control group. Using the SAGIP mental health app is associated with a non-linear improvement in users’ psychological well-being and a reduction of their psychological distress over time. Furthermore, based on the latent growth curve modeling, when controlling for the effects of psychological distress over time, participants who use the SAGIP mental health app experience better improvements in their psychological well-being compared to those who did not use the app. Nonetheless, user engagement in the form of frequency and duration of use was not a significant factor in well-being outcomes for those who use the SAGIP mental health app.