Harnessing the Digital Toolkit: Apps for Supporting Mental Health Goals

You don’t need to be in therapy to use E-mental health tools such as apps. You can now find so many wonderful apps to support your mental and physical wellbeing. Here are several benefits of using apps to support your mental health.

ACCOUNTABILITY

Apps have wonderful features these days that allow for push notifications. These are a simple tool to help to keep you accountable between appointments. Most allow you to set specifications. These can be, date, time and frequency which take guessing game out of when you are going to complete your goal. You can for example, set a reminder to pop up for when you will complete your meditation practice. This increases the likelihood of you completing the tasks and achieving your goals.

ACCESSIBILITY

Another benefit of e-mental health apps is they are on your phone. This means they are generally within your reach. So when you want to use them, you don’t have to do much other than open your phone and they are with you on the go. For many this is a huge benefit as you can have access to evidence-based support wherever you are.

For example, an evidence-based practice available to you in an app is deep breathing. Practicing it helps you to regulate your nervous system. This can be useful in many circumstances such as before giving a presentation or a webinar. I like recommending breathing apps to my clients as they are easy to follow and come with added benefits. I like Breathair for android users. It is useful because it has visual and auditory cues making it a great mindfulness exercise. This will both regulate your nervous system and get you out of your head and back to the present.

AFFORDABILITY

While some apps have a small to medium fee many are free (with sometimes, some in app purchases). Apps thus are a cost-effective way to work on your mental and physical wellbeing. For a small fee or for free they can also allow you access to programs made by mental health organisations or practitioners. It is important to make sure they made by people with appropriate qualifications

PERSONALISATION

A feature I love about apps is the ability to personalise. This applies to a few aspects of apps. First, the amount of choice. You can now find apps that have resources, tools, and features that you like. This means they can not only fit your mental health goals but your personality and lifestyle. A helpful feature I have come across working as a psychologist is the sound of the voice of the resources or app. No matter how good the resource or app, many are not going to complete the exercise if they don’t like the voice. Luckily there is now so much variety available in the app stores, you can tend to find an app with a voice you like.

The next is the ability to personalise in the app itself. For example, to save the tracks and tools you like so they are accessible to you when you need them. Also, some even give you several voice options in app.

IMMEDIATE FEEDBACK

There is a now a wonderful feature that I find so useful in apps where you can take a photo and it can read the text. This allows apps to give immediate feedback. This feedback can be on the quality of food, skincare and personal hygiene items. As no system in the body works alone, this can be useful for one’s mental health. For example, knowing what additives are in food can impact some people's mental health.

Another feature I would like to highlight in this category is location. An example of how this is useful for your mental health and therapeutic goals is sun exposure. I and other psychologists will often give a tasks of sitting in the sun a certain times of day. One being when you will get vitamin d exposure. For most it can be hard to know when you can get Vitamin D from the sun. Now you can get immediate feedback based on your location. This is important not only for your physical health but also your mental health. Vitamin D has been shown to play a role in depression like symptoms.

FOR YOU

I have made my comprehensive Apps For Your Mental Health list available to you. In the past this was just for my clients. It includes 24 apps across 8 categories. These include,

- Meditation

- Breathing

- Sleep

- Physical health

- Mood support

- Mood tracking

- Relationships

- Perinatal and postnatal support.

GET THE APPS TO SUPPORT YOUR MENTAL HEALTH LIST IN THE BOX BELOW