A “growth mindset of mental health” intervention increases the likelihood of initiating self-help on a mental health app: a randomized controlled trial

Mental health apps hold potential to improve access to treatment, but engagement remains low. One barrier may be the belief that mental health cannot be meaningfully improved. In a randomized controlled trial (N = 252), we examined whether a brief growth-mindset-of-mental-health intervention—portraying mental health as improvable, not fixed—can initiate mental health app engagement among people with mental health needs.

Participants completed baseline well-being measures (stress, anxiety and depression, and positive mental well-being) and were randomly assigned to the growth-mindset-of-mental-health or active control condition. Over the subsequent three months, we tracked whether they re-engaged with the app overall (i.e., completed at least a second self-help feature), and with features categorized as low-, moderate-, and high-intensity. Analyses revealed that participants in the growth-mindset condition (vs. control) with poorer baseline mental well-being (i.e., higher stress, anxiety and depressive symptoms, and lower positive mental well-being) were significantly more likely to show repeat app engagement.

Moreover, those with higher anxiety and depressive symptoms were more likely to show repeat engagement with moderate-intensity features, while those experiencing higher stress and lower positive mental well-being were more likely to do so with both low- and moderate-intensity features. Together, these findings demonstrate the benefits of the growth-mindset intervention for successful initiation of self-help on a mental health app. Trial Registration: The trial was registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (Identifier: NCT07071311) on July 25, 2025.

The authors would like to thank all organizations and employees who participated in this study. Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Department of Management, University of Exeter Business School, Exeter, UK The authors declare the following interests which may be considered as potential competing interests: Oliver Suendermann holds the position of Vice President Clinical Director at Intellect Pte Ltd; he also reports holding equity in Intellect. At the time of data collection, Sean Toh Han Yang and Feodora Kosasih were Clinical Research Associates for Intellect.

O’Keefe, have never had an affiliation with Intellect and do not have any competing interests. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.

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