ABSTRACT
A plethora of therapeutic smartphone apps now aim to help individuals as well as non-mental health specialists to identify and manage emotions, stress, and mental health. Technology-enabled mental healthcare is increasingly constructed as the solution to close what is deemed to be a mental health treatment gap in low- and middle-income countries. In many countries of the Global South, and especially in rural areas, mobile mental health is seen as a key way to extend the reach of mental health support by extending self-management techniques through a ‘portable therapist in every pocket’ (Anthes, 2016: p. 21), as well as using technology to enable ‘task-sharing’, where technology is used to support those deemed to be non-specialists (i.e., those without formal mental health training) in clinical decision-making. These different strategies of using mobile health (mhealth) are rarely analysed alongside each other, with the former imagined as a largely Global North, high-income, phenomenon and the latter a concern for low- and middle-income countries. This chapter explores continuities and differences in two mobile digital applications as part of the unfolding digital therapeutic assemblage in India and sets out how they work to construct mental health as amenable to technological (especially digital) solutions.
