Mobile health apps to reach and support young people who have a parent with mental illness or substance abuse issues

Children of parents with a mental Illness – Planning for Equitable and Sustainable Digital Mobile Health Interventions to Reach and Support Them

Children of parents with psychiatric conditions have the right to access preventive measures aimed at reducing the risk of developing their own mental health issues and socioeconomic problems. However, access to such interventions varies significantly across Sweden’s healthcare and social services.

The general research idea of this project is to contribute to equitable and health-promoting care for these children through preventive mobile health (mHealth) digital interventions. The exploratory planning grant enables us to prepare a larger project, with the following objectives:

  1. Conduct a needs assessment in consultation with the target group (young people) and a reference group (professionals/civil society, researchers).
  2. Systematically map and conduct an interdisciplinary quality assessment of internationally available mHealth applications (apps).
  3. Explore the conditions for development, evaluation, implementation, sustainable access, and further development of mHealth solutions.

To achieve our objectives, we will collaborate in different constellations, conduct interviews and workshops with young people and the reference group, and use the well-established Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS) and its user version (uMARS) to assess the quality of existing apps. With the knowledge gained from objectives 1 and 2, we can confidently create a study protocol for a larger research project. This will include descriptions of modifications to existing mHealth apps or the development of a new mHealth app to be used in a digital intervention for our target group. The study protocol is one of the key outcomes of the planning grant.

Equitable and health-promoting care is one of the priority areas in Swedish public health policy. Despite broader governmental efforts, support for children of parents with psychiatric conditions remains inadequate in clinical practice. A nationally available digital solution that young people can easily access is therefore highly desirable. Our project can contribute to this by providing knowledge to decision-makers and healthcare professionals, but above all, by improving support for young people.

Project period:
2025–2026

Funder:
Forte