Text messaging: The next gen of therapy in mental health

In the US, approximately 19% of all adults have a diagnosable mental illness. Clinic-based services may fall short of meeting patient needs. In the first randomized controlled trial of its kind, a team investigated the impact of a texting intervention as an add-on to a mental health treatment program versus one without it. A new study finds that a text-messaging-based intervention can be a safe, clinically promising and feasible tool to augment care for people with serious mental illness.