Development of the Mobile Application to Prevent Suicide (MAPS), a Personalized Smartphone App for Suicide Prevention: Feedback from Individual Interviews

Abstract

The goal of this study was to explore preferences regarding the Mobile Application to Prevent Suicide (MAPS), an ecological momentary intervention smartphone app. We conducted individual interviews with 10 adults hospitalized for suicidal ideation or behavior. In these interviews, we asked about participants’ preferences associated with smartphone apps for suicide prevention in general and requested feedback on the specific features of the MAPS intervention. We used line-by-line inductive coding to create a codebook and identify where codes were most prominently displayed. Participants expressed interest in personalized, targeted approaches to suicide prevention, psychoeducation, access to coping strategies, and direct access to crisis services. Involving individuals with lived experience in the early stages is an essential step in the development of a smartphone app for suicide prevention.

Keywords:

• Ecological momentary intervention
• interview
• mobile application
• suicide

Acknowledgements

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not represent those of the Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, or the United States Government. The authors would like to acknowledge the research participants who provided us with invaluable feedback about the MAPS, former research staff who dedicated time to this project, and our app development partners at iJourney, Inc.

Disclosure statement

The authors report that there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health under Grants R34MH124971 (Schatten, Armey, Miller, Hughes, Elwy, Alboukrek, Kimble) and T32MH126426 (Hughes), American Foundation for Suicide Prevention under Grant SRG-1-119-18 (Schatten, Miller), VA HSR&D RCS 23-018 and NIGMS U54GM115677 which funds Advance – Rhode Island Clinical and Translational Research (Advance-CTR) (Elwy), and HSR&D Innovation Award HX002972-01 (Primack).