Listening to Users: How VA Developed Its PTSD Coach Mobile App

When Dr. Julia Hoffman wanted to build a mobile app to help veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, she went to the source: 80 residential PTSD patients at the Veterans Affairs Department Trauma Recovery Program in Palo Alto, Calif.

The vets' top priority, they told her, was finding something to help them relax and focus when they were in the grip of a PTSD attack, suffering from related symptoms such as anger or sleeplessness or generally stressed out. The vets wanted an app to guide them through many of the same techniques they followed with therapists, such as rating their stress level, practicing deep breathing and progressively relaxing their muscles, she said.

So Hoffman and other clinicians at the Veterans Affairs Department's National Center for PTSD and the Defense Department's National Center for Telehealth and Technology built tutorials for those practices into the "manage symptoms" tab on the PTSD Coach app, one of the most praised and downloaded apps created by a government agency...