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Paper short abstract:

There are more than 10.000 apps for mental health were available. In Brazil,Cíngulo Guided Therapy has more than 1 million downloads. I chose it as my research object and I intend to identify: why people have started to use digital therapy for mental care and discover what there are behind its uses.

Paper long abstract:

Due to the high number of people affected by depression around the globe, since 2017, more than 10.000 apps for mental health were available to download through smartphones (TOROUS, ROBERTS; 2017). In Brazil, according to PlayStore data, there is one with more than 1 million downloads, called Cíngulo Guided Therapy. So, I chose it as my research object. About it, I intend to: 1) identify why people have started to use digital therapy for mental care; 2) discover what there are behind its uses. I suppose that cyberculture is the reason people accept and use new technologies, offered by the market, without thinking about consequences. Based on habitus conception (BOURDIEU, 1998), I defend that cultural practices, under the course of time, are understood as a natural action. Maybe, users do not reflect on their uses because transformations occur in the moral and practical spheres at the same time (MILLER; HORST, 2015). By the way, while they expect to get good services, most parts of them do not know that they are being watched when using the app. So, if “technologies are a product of a society and its culture” (LEVY; 1999, p. 22), I suspect that this Mhealth may be another product of capitalist society, aimed at surveillance capitalism (ZUBOFF; 2015). Therefore, I argue that it needs to be investigated and problematized in order to foster discussions relevant to Anthropology, that there are may still be covered by the fog of constant technological changes.