(2019-10-14) The Next Great Mental Health App Will Look Like Pokemon Go

The next great mental health app will look like Pokemon Go, according to a Silicon Valley psychologist. Dr. Cameron Sepah, a psychologist who works primarily with tech executives and VCs in his San Francisco private practice, believes that "digital therapeutics," like these apps, are the future of mental healthcare, because they are more easily scaleable and accessible than traditional therapy. He says that the next generation of mental health apps won't look like traditional treatments, instead they will be more like games.

"The next great mental health app will look like Pokemon Go, and SuperBetter is the closest I've seen so far," he told Business Insider in a phone call.

According to Dr. Sepah, applying gaming terms to anxiety symptoms can encourage you "not to escape your real life, but play the game of life." Dr. Sepah says that the biggest challenge is digitizing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which has been proven to be effective, but can also be "boring."

Unlike SuperBetter, Happify does not list research that specifically studies the app's impact on anxiety symptoms. It does, however, have a board of experts including PhDs and MDs.