Study title

Recent years have highlighted the increasing need to promote mental well-being in the general population. This has led to a rapidly growing market of fully automated digital mental well-being tools. Although many individuals have started using these tools in their daily lives, evidence on the overall effectiveness of digital mental well-being tools is currently lacking. The objective of the current study was therefore to review evidence on the effectiveness of fully automated digital interventions to promote mental well-being in the general population. Following preregistration of the systematic review protocol on PROSPERO (registration: CRD42022310702), searches were carried out in: Medline, Web of Science, Cochrane, PsychINFO, PsychEXTRA, Scopus and ACM Digital (initial searches in February 2022; updated in October 2022). Studies were included if they contained a general population sample and a fully automated digital intervention that exclusively employed psychological mental well-being promotion activities. Two reviewers, blinded to each other’s decisions, conducted data selection, extraction and quality assessment of the included studies. A narrative synthesis and a random-effects model of Per Protocol (PP) data were adopted. A total of 7,243 participants in 19 studies were included. These studies contained 24 fully automated digital mental well-being interventions of which 15 were included in the meta-analysis. Compared with no intervention, there was a significant small effect of fully automated digital mental well-being interventions on mental well-being in the general population (SMD = 0.19, 95% CI ranging from 0.04 to 0.33). Specifically, mindfulness, acceptance & commitment, and compassion-based interventions significantly promoted mental well-being in the general population; insufficient evidence was available for positive psychology and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)-based interventions; and contraindications were found for integrative...