Your phone is now a potential therapist. You sit on a couch, you talk to it, it listens, it charges you money, you feel better. Ok, ok, that’s a tad cynical of me. Let me begin again.

Dr. Nader Amir, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, suggests that the days of software-based psychological help are upon us. Dr. Amir has conducted a study into the potential of Blackberry software to help people with social anxiety. In one exercise, a human face with a neutral expression flashes on the screen at the same time as a face with a disgusted mien. A millisecond later, the software prompts the patient to identify a letter that materializes on the same part of the screen where the neutral face appeared. With repetition, the patient begins to ignore the negative image and look to the neutral zone for answers, which eases anxiety.

Dr. Amir published his study in 2009 in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. Patients diagnosed with social anxiety received less than three hours of attention retraining spread out through four weeks. After the study was over, half of the patients who received the treatment no longer met the diagnostic criteria for social anxiety.

Great, so now we encourage socially anxious people to spurn “real” social interaction and instead fiddle in private with their phone “therapist.” Wouldn’t it save a lot of time and effort if these people wrenched themselves away from their neutral-faced phone therapists and just spent some time with their happy-faced friends and relatives? No wait, as a psychologist I should know that sounds too straightforward and common-sensical.

Ok, back to the phone therapist. From what Dr. Amir says, next I suspect that this phone package won’t be for gamers. The software programs are “like really boring computer games,” he says. So we gamers might be cured of social anxiety, but now we’re depressed after playing hours of “boring games.” Not a problem – we simply buy another phone software package to manage depression. No wait, my mistake – they already exist. They’re called “games.” A more plausible comparison of your phone to a therapist might be all the monthly costs that you accrue with it and the fact that you simply can’t live your life without it.

Right, I’m off to consult my Blackberry physician software package. My leg has just fallen off and I want to see if it’s serious.