Designing digital mental health interventions for older adults: a scoping review

TL;DR

This review explores how to design digital mental health tools for older adults, focusing on addressing their unique challenges and needs.

Contribution

The study identifies key design considerations for digital mental health interventions tailored to older adults, based on both experimental and expert evidence.

Findings

Digital mental health interventions for older adults should address functional limitations, digital literacy, and access to technology.

Co-design with older adults, content adaptation, and privacy are highlighted as important development considerations.

Mobile apps, online platforms, and videoconferencing tools are commonly used to target depression, anxiety, and grief.

Abstract

This scoping review aimed to explore the technical and health content-related features that digital mental health interventions (DMHIs) for older adults should entail to facilitate their future design, development, and implementation. We included peer-reviewed expert opinion papers, experimental studies and their protocols on DMHIs for older adults. We searched PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO, Web of Science and Google Scholar. A total of 98 studies were included, comprising 81 experimental studies and 17 expert opinion papers. The DMHIs reported in experimental studies and their protocols included mobile apps, online platforms, and videoconferencing tools, targeting depression, anxiety and grief. However, experts highlighted three main challenges faced by older adults: functional limitations, limited digital literacy, and restricted access to technology. This review provides considerations for the development of future DMHIs, including co-design with older adults, content adaptation, gamification, stakeholder involvement, and privacy and data security. Further research is needed to evaluate these considerations for real-world settings.

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