In 1964, Joseph Weizenbaum at the MIT developed ELIZA, a natural language processing (NLP) program. You could write to Eliza, and get Eliza would answer with questions based on patterns it could identify in the words you were writing. This made clear that computers could be used as a psychological help or in therapy.
Nowadays, a bunch of startups propose online programs that feel more inspired from fitness coaching than these early days NLP first steps.
In Germany, 2 programs come to my mind:
Deprexis
https://de.deprexis.com/
Selfapy
https://selfapy.de
But are these programs useful?
An article of Gründerzsene shares that Stiftung Warentest, a very influential organisation in charge of testing products and services, does not see Selfapy as one of the best, but rates Deprexis as really good. https://www.gruenderszene.de/business/selfapy-stiftung-warentest
Nevertheless, both apps seem to be worth a try.
There is a good article about Farina Schurzfeld, one of the co-founders of Selfapy on Taz, a newspaper that is really trustworthy:
https://taz.de/Der-Hausbesuch/!5717261/
A very important change happened end of 2019, the Digital Healthcare Act (Digitale-Versorgung-Gesetzes, DVG) enables doctors and psychotherapists to recommend health apps to their patients that would be paid by the public health system.
These Health Applications are called Digital Gesundheitsanwendungen (DiGA) and there is a list of them recommended by the BfArM (Bundesinstitut für Arzneimittel und Medizinprodukte) available online.
Until now, just a few are recommended: https://diga.bfarm.de/de/verzeichnis
Kalmeda, from Mynoise GmbH helps patients suffering from tinnitus.
Somnio, from mementor DE GmbH helps patients suffering from insomnia.
Velibra from helps patients manage fears and anxiety (agoraphobia…).
A few more links about the topic:
healthon
www.healthon.de
trustedhealthapps
www.trustedhealthapps.org