Development and evaluation of an emotion regulation app

Background Individuals with mental disorders have limited competence in dealing with difficult emotions. Berking (2017) provides a well-structured treatment manual to train emotional competencies across a broad range of mental disorders: Affect Regulation Training (ART). In studies, ART has been demonstrated to improve emotional competence and reduce symptom severity in patients with mental disorders. Due to the well-defined structure of ART, it is suitable for digital application. Objectives Among other goals, an ART app could bridge the gap between waiting lists and the initiation of treatment and also better exploit the potential of therapy-related exercises. Currently, there is a smartphone-based version of ART that can be complementarily used to provide support to ART group training. The long-term goal is to develop a complete standalone version of the ART app. Materials For this purpose, research findings will be implemented to address and minimize the hitherto problems of smartphone-based health promotion. Clinical trials will then be conducted to test the effectiveness of the ART app. Results Preliminary findings indicate that the ART training app is well-accepted by users when embedded in the group training. Results concerning effectiveness of the standalone version of the ART app are still pending. Conclusion The effectiveness of the ART app should be evaluated in individuals with mental disorders who are on treatment waiting lists and in the context of aftercare. In the long-term, the ART app is expected to benefit from the ongoing development of sensory technology and artificial intelligence and will enable the app to measure and provide feedback on biosignals of emotional processes.