My Mental Health Crisis Plan App Launch and Engagement Campaign

To help expand the use of psychiatric advance directives, we helped launch an app and a national campaign to drive its use

Challenge

SMI Adviser was funded in 2018 when the American Psychiatric Association (APA) was awarded a 5-year grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. One KPI for the initiative was to expand the use of psychiatric advance directives (PADs). The plan to accomplish that involved building a dynamic mobile app. The app would automate the process and make it easier to access and share a PAD. Aside from building the app, other challenges included educating the field and creating a user base for the app from scratch.

Our challenge was multifaceted. We had to work alongside app developers and technical leads to create a user guide for the app. We also needed to develop marketing assets and a tactical marketing plan to create a user base for the app.

My Mental Health Crisis Plan App Launch and Engagement Campaign

Solution

Our team worked closely with our clients at APA and third-party app developers. We helped write and refine content for the app and participated in UI testing. That informed our work to write and design a detailed facilitator guide for the app. This guide provided a road map for mental health professionals to guide individuals and family members on how to use the app. Our team also created a suite of materials for the site — social media graphics, flyers for events, and more — and a broad, national digital campaign to drive activation and use of the app.