"That's Kind of Sus(picious)": The Comprehensiveness of Mental Health Application Users' Privacy and Security Concerns

Abstract

With the increasing usage of mental health applications (MHAs), there is growing concern regarding their data privacy practices. Analyzing 437 user reviews from 83 apps, we outline users' predominant privacy and security concerns with currently available apps. We then compare those concerns to criteria from two prominent app evaluation websites – Privacy Not Included and One Mind PsyberGuide. Our findings show that MHA users have myriad data privacy and security concerns including a user's control over their own data, but these concerns do not often overlap with those of experts from evaluation websites who focus more on issues such as required password strength. We highlight this disconnect and propose solutions in how the mental health care ecosystem can provide better guidance to MHA users and experts from the fields of privacy and security and mental health technology in choosing and evaluating, respectively, potentially useful mental health apps.