Integrating Digital Therapeutics Into GAD Care

Alongside telehealth services, digital therapeutics are expanding the landscape of how patients receive mental health care and treatment. 

In this video filmed at Psych Congress 2025, Saundra Jain, MA, PsyD, LPC, Steering Committee member, discusses how clinicians can leverage digital therapeutics for the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). In addition to clarifying the difference between wellness apps, digital therapeutics, and prescription digital therapeutics, Dr Jain discusses practical, patient-centered strategies for integrating these digital tools into clinical practice. She also equips clinicians with specific recommendations for digital and prescription digital therapeutics that are available for the treatment of GAD. 

For more expert insights, visit the Telehealth Excellence Forum. 

For more conference coverage, visit the Psych Congress newsroom.

• Wellness apps lack supporting research, whereas digital therapeutics demonstrate evidence for efficacy, safety, outcomes. Prescription digital therapeutics target a specific disorder and are overseen by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
• For GAD, Daylight is a digital therapeutic available for mild to moderate symptoms without a prescription, while DaylightRx is a prescription digital therapeutic that requires clinician authorization.
• In clinical practice, clinicians should assess patients’ prior experience, knowledge, and comfort with digital tools, invite curiosity before providing education, and avoid pressuring patients who are not interested.

Read the Transcript

Saundra Jain, MA, PsyD, LPC: Hi, everyone. My name is Dr Saundra Jain and I'm a happy member of the Psych Congress family and part of their Steering Committee. I serve as an adjunct clinical affiliate at the University of Texas in Austin School of Nursing. I also have a private practice in Dallas, Texas.

Psych Congress Network: What is the difference between a wellness app and a digital therapeutic? Which options are available for GAD? Could you share how you integrate digital tools into your own practice?

Jain: One of the most exciting areas in the world of mental health—not just specifically GAD, but that's what we're going to talk about today—but just in psychiatry are digital therapeutics. Probably the most confusing thing when we begin having conversations with our patients and colleagues about this is: What is the difference between a wellness app and a digital therapeutic?

It really is based on the amount of scientific evidence backing the product or backing the particular tool. If you think about it in terms of a pyramid, at the bottom of the pyramid, we have wellness apps. These typically do not have any type of evidence or research. They may be very useful in gathering data points about how well you're sleeping. They could be an app for meditation, for breath work—so they are useful, but we want to make sure our patients know that there is not evidence supporting them. That’s at the bottom. 

Then we move to the middle of the pyramid as we go upwards. Those are digital therapeutics. Those will have some degree of evidence looking at efficacy, safety, and outcomes. 

Then you move up to the top of the pyramid. You see we're going up in terms of evidence-based and research, with more rigor as we go up to the top of the pyramid. At the top of the pyramid are what's called prescription digital therapeutics.

Those actually claim to treat a specific disorder or illness and they are overseen by regulatory boards like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). That's super helpful [to know] as we make recommendations so that our patients understand what we're actually offering to them. 

Now, in the world of GAD, you may be curious, what's available? I'll tell you about one particular product specific for GAD, and that is called Daylight and DaylightRx. You can tell that the Rx denotes that that particular digital tool or prescription digital therapeutic, PDT, does require a prescription.

The company also offers Daylight, which is for mild to moderate symptoms of GAD, and it does not require a prescription. 

The other thing I want to make sure I share with you is this: How do I do that? How do I talk to my patients about it? I think it's just basic common sense. I would be curious to know, what do they know about prescription digital therapeutics, about wellness apps? Have they tried anything before? Do they have any kind of technology phobia? [If the patient] feels like, “I don't really know how to do that.”

We just open up a conversation, and then I will always ask, “Might you be curious in knowing more? If you are, I'm happy to tell you what I know.” But the one thing I don't want to do is jump in and start giving a lot of information and trying to convince somebody of doing something that they may really not have any interest in. 

But there are specific, both digital as well as prescription digital therapeutics for augmentation for the treatment of GAD.

Saundra Jain, MA, PsyD, LPC, is an adjunct clinical affiliate in the School of Nursing at The University of Texas at Austin and a psychotherapist in private practice. Dr Jain is a co-creator of WILD 5 – A Proven Path to Wellness and co-author of The Science and Practice of Wellness: Interventions for Happiness, Enthusiasm, Resilience, and Optimism (HERO). She is the co-creator of the Psychedelics and Wellness Survey (PAWS), exploring the intersection between psychedelics and wellness. She is also the co-host of the newly launched podcast Happy Human 3.0, which explores how modern humans can move beyond merely surviving 21st-century stressors and begin to flourish by integrating neuroscience, positive psychiatry, and compassionate, human-centered care.

© 2026 HMP Global. All Rights Reserved.
 
Any views and opinions expressed above are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy, or position of the Psych Congress Network or HMP Global, their employees, and affiliates.