Background
mental illness, perinatal mental illness, psychoses, DHIs, SMI, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder
Digital health interventions (DHIs) are apps and other forms of interactive technology intended to provide benefits for people experiencing health problems [Health service strategies for making decisions about the commissioning and recommendation of DHIs are evolving. In England, the NHS evaluates DHIs using the Digital Technology Assessment Criteria, which consider clinical safety, data protection, technical assurance, interoperability, usability, and accessibility but not effectiveness. This means that apps can be recommended through the NHS website that have been evaluated as safe but where evidence for effectiveness is not available [Health care staff have been directly involved in the delivery of treatment in some evaluations of purely self-directed DHIs. In an early RCT of the web application Beating the Blues [Online trials have the potential to increase access to treatment for people with experience of severe mental illness (SMI). SMI is defined as psychological problems that severely affect the ability to engage in functional and occupational activities. This term is collectively used to refer to diagnoses that include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other psychoses [This gap between prevalence and specialist service use may occur for several reasons. First, a range of barriers to accessing traditional mental health services have been identified. A systematic review investigating access for women with perinatal mental illness identified barriers at 4 levels: individual (eg, stigma and poor awareness), organizational (eg, resource inadequacies and service fragmentation), sociocultural (eg, language and cultural barriers), and structural (eg, unclear policy) [