Proven effectiveness
A pilot evaluation conducted in collaboration with Helsana Insurance shows that ephoria demonstrably improves the mental well-being.
In a pre-post measurement involving 159 participants, a significant reduction in psychological distress was observed — measured using the established GHQ-12 instrument. Among users with initial distress, a medium effect size was found (Cohen’s d = 0.46). Over a period of three months, the average effect across all users reached d = 0.59.
The improvement correlates with active and regular use of the app. Compared to other interventions, ephoria demonstrates an above-average impact — while remaining easily accessible at low costs.
Further details and comparative benchmarks can be found in the full factsheet.
800 million people suffer from mental health conditions
The traditional care system is over capacity and many patients do not receive help on time.
This tragic health crisis results in unnecessary severities and deaths, incapacities to work and ultimately in a yearly economic damage of more than 1 trillion USD.1
ephoria offers low-threshold and cost-effective access to evidence-based mental health and is also suitable as an accompanying tool for therapies.
Solution-focused brief therapy
A meta-study from 2022 showed that this form of therapy achieves positive results in 86.3% of cases.2
In order to make changes effective, it is crucial to plan sensible intervention strategies and regularly remind the user, as the planned strategies are often lost sight of in everyday life.
With targeted reminders and exercises, users are supported in maintaining and internalising personalised strategies for mental health.
The development of ephoria took into account the findings from the third wave of psychotherapy (mindfulness, acceptance and emotion regulation) and the fourth wave (digitalisation).
This is a paradigm shift: away from treating symptoms and towards recognising and changing patterns of thought and behaviour that contribute to the development and maintenance of the underlying mental disorders or stresses. Such metaprocesses are cross-disorder and play a central role in the modern psychotherapeutic understanding of both the development and treatment of almost all mental disorders.
Research and development
ephoria is being developed in close cooperation with the
ZHAW School of Applied Psychology and the departement for Media Psychology.
The ZHAW Institute for Applied Psychology is the leading continuing education and counselling services institute for applied psychology in Switzerland. Since 1923, it has been developing concrete solutions for practical challenges on the basis of scientifically sound psychology.
Sources:
- [1] World Health Organization (2022). World Mental Health Report: WHO highlights urgent need to transform mental health and mental health care
- [2] Marie-Carmen Neipp & Mark Beyebach (2022) The Global Outcomes of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: A Revision, The American Journal of Family Therapy, DOI:10.1080/01926187.2022.2069175
- [3] Harith, S., Backhaus, I., Mohbin, N., Ngo, H. T., & Khoo, S. (2022). Effectiveness of digital mental health interventions for university students: an umbrella review. PeerJ, 10, e13111. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.13111