Personalizing Digital Mental Health Tools Without Overstepping
The Big Problem
Most of us expect mental health apps to act like extensions of care—to listen, protect, and respect the sensitivity of what we share. Yet each mood log or journal entry may also feed systems built to optimize engagement. When the Federal Trade Commission fined BetterHelp, a major online counseling platform, in 2023 for sharing users’ therapy histories with Facebook,1 it raised an uneasy question: How well are digital care models aligned with patient well-being?
Digital mental health platforms often promise accessibility and personalization, but those benefits come with trade-offs. To tailor support, apps must collect data; to sustain themselves, apps often rely on commercial infrastructures that treat this data as assets. The result isn’t always an apparent breach of ethics—it’s that digital care operates within a commercial infrastructure built for speed and data volume, not therapeutic nuance. When platforms depend on engagement metrics, even small design choices—how often an app sends reminders, how long it stores mood data—start reflecting business incentives as much as clinical ones.
Behavioral science offers a way forward. It can help build systems where personalization is opt-in, privacy rights are transparent, written in plain language, and interfaces prompt reflection instead of chasing engagement. Each principle shifts digital care closer to informed, ethical personalization rather than unexamined automation.
About the Author
Maryam Sorkhou
Maryam holds an Honours BSc in Psychology from the University of Toronto and is currently completing her PhD in Medical Science at the same institution. She studies how sex and gender interact with mental health and substance use, using neurobiological and behavioural approaches. Passionate about blending neuroscience, psychology, and public health, she works toward solutions that center marginalized populations and elevate voices that are often left out of mainstream science.
