Effective trialing of digital interventions in daily life – the mental health perspective

Digital mental health interventions show promise but have yet to meet expectations. We discuss gaps between promising results of pilot studies and null findings in randomized controlled trials, focusing on two major approaches: just-in-time relapse prevention and just-in-time adaptive interventions. We propose that relapse prevention will profit from long-term studies capturing emerging episodes, and we suggest a novel framework for adaptive interventions including causality testing to proceed towards effective trialing.