When you recommend a mental health app and it disappears from the store six months later, the patient does not come back and tell you. They stop using it, and if it held their mood diary or their exposure hierarchy, that goes too.
There is one cheap check that predicts durability better than star ratings: does it exist on both Android and iOS? Platform exclusivity was the strongest single marker of an app being withdrawn, and Android-only apps carried more than twice the hazard. Sleep apps lasted longest; smoking cessation apps were among the most likely to vanish.
So before you write the name down, open both stores. And tell the patient to export or screenshot anything they would not want to lose — most of these apps keep data locally and withdraw without warning.
- Check the app is listed on both Android and iOS before recommending it
- Tell the patient to export or back up diary data they would mind losing
- Keep a short list of apps you have checked rather than naming whatever comes to mind
- Re-check the list every few months; over half the apps in one large database went in five years
Why it matters
An app that vanishes takes the patient's data and their engagement with it, and nobody reports that back to you.
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