SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Schizophrenia
This article is part of the Research TopiceHealth and Personalized Medicine in Mental Health and Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Digital Innovation for Diagnosis, Care, and Clinical ManagementView all 17 articles
The Impact of Mobile Health Interventions on Patients with Schizophrenia: a Meta-Analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Lishui Second People's Hospital, Lishui, China
- 2The Affiliated Kangning Hospital of Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
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Objective: To systematically evaluate the impact of mobile health (mHealth) interventions on patients with schizophrenia. Methods: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) concerning the effects of mHealth interventions on patients with schizophrenia were retrieved from databases including CNKI, WanFang, VIP, CBM, PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, and Web of Science from their inception until September 2025. Data analysis was performed using RevMan 5.4 software. Results: A total of 10 RCTs involving 1135 patients with schizophrenia were included. The analysis results showed that the intervention group was significantly better than the control group in improving positive symptoms of schizophrenia (SMD = -0.18, 95% CI = -0.34 to -0.02, P = 0.03). The control group had a lower incidence of adverse events compared to the intervention group (OR = 2.30, 95% CI = 1.31 to 4.04, P = 0.004). There was no significant difference between the two groups in depressive symptoms (SMD = -0.02, 95% CI = -0.23 to 0.19, P = 0.83). Conclusion: mHealth interventions demonstrate a slight but definite positive effect on improving positive symptoms in schizophrenia. However, they show no significant effect on improving depressive symptoms. While a higher incidence of adverse events was reported in the intervention group, this finding should be interpreted with caution as it may be influenced by enhanced detection through digital monitoring (surveillance bias).
Keywords: Depression, incidence of adverse events, Meta-analysis, mobile health, positive symptoms, Schizophrenia
Received: 29 Sep 2025; Accepted: 05 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ye, Zhang and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yangyang Zhou
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