Top 10 Apps For Mental Health Support

Our mental health is just as vitally important as our physical health, and this means regulating it when we become mentally unwell. Everyone’s mental health can fluctuate, and what's important is to recognise and accept that, and to work towards getting back to a healthy medium. For many, this may include therapies, coping mechanisms, escapism, or even subtle changes. But this may also include reaching out to people, or accessing services. Keeping mentally healthy can be particularly challenging, particularly for LGBT+ people during lockdown. As a community that historically has a documented increased likelihood of facing discrimination and abuse that leads to increased rates of mental health issues, staying afloat can sometimes be very difficult. To that end, we’ve collected 10 of the best mental health apps that you can download to get on top of your health. Each app is free and available on both Android and iOS. As a trigger warning, this article will discuss mental health issues including depression, anxiety, suicide, eating disorders, and others, so please continue carefully.

What’s Up

What’s up is an app that uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help you cope with Depression, Anxiety, Stress, and other conditions that affect your mental health. Using the positive and negative habit tracker to maintain your good habits, and break those that are counterproductive, you’ll be on your way to regulating your health in no time. See also the “Get Grounded” page, which contains over 100 different questions to pinpoint what you’re feeling, and the “Thinking Patterns” page, which teaches you how to stop negative thoughts from getting hold of you.

Self Help for Anxiety Management

Looking for self-help, but struggling with meditation? Try SAM. Users are prompted to build their own 24-hour anxiety toolkit that helps follow anxious behavior over time, and teaches you numerous techniques to avoid anxiety attacks, or tackle them when they happen. SAM also has a “Social Cloud” feature to confidentially connect with other users for support and to build a strong web of connections with others who understand your situation.

CBT Thought Record Diary

Cognitive-behavioral therapy operates on the method of changing your emotions by identifying negative thinking patterns and modifying them. CBT Thought Record Diary works by collecting negative emotions, recognising problems and patterns in them, and correcting yourself to avoid negative thoughts in the future. This is an app built for changing your approach to anxiety and managing your triggers going forward, and can be really useful for keeping yourself steady!

Rise Up and Recover

Many people struggle with eating disorders that control their lives. Rise Up and Recover is a one-of-a-kind app as it not only tracks what you eat and how you feel when you eat, but you can also print your progress into a PDF printout that you can use to track how you’re getting along. Use Rise and Recover when you feel the urge to binge or skip a meal, and need quick coping strategies, to ensure that you can control your eating disorder and have a happier, healthier relationship with food.

nOCD

nOCD was built by OCD specialists and patients to bring together two successful methods of treatment: mindfulness and Exposure Response Prevention Treatment (ERPT). The app provides immediate, clinical guidance when OCD strikes, conducts regular tests to assess the severity of your OCD, and provides you with constant support along the way. nOCD has been described as a free therapist by some, and we certainly think it goes a good way towards helping control your OCD.

UCSF PRIME

Schizophrenia can be incredibly isolating for patients, and lockdown will exacerbate this even further as people are distanced from each other. USCF PRIME was created by professor Danielle Shlosser to unite people with schizophrenia to their peers with a social network to tackle that isolating feeling. Members can track “challenge goals,” which is the platform’s way of setting targets to achieve to help you on the road to managing your mental health long term.

Breathe2Relax

PTSD, anxiety, and panic attacks are a horrible situation to be in, and trying to avoid them is an important part of managing your mental health. Breathe2Relax exists to help you breathe and remind yourself that you are okay. Built by the National Center for Telehealth and Technology, Breathe2Relax utilises medically-supported breathing techniques to de-escalate your situation and place your feet back on the ground, to prevent your fight-or-flight reaction kicking in.

Quit That!

Quit That is a simple yet genius app that takes a very simple premise: Many of us struggle with bad habits or addictions, and need help to overcome that. Quit That allows you to track as many of these as possible to plot your recovery and keep progress in your fight against addiction, as you count the seconds, minutes, hours, days, and months since you stopped with whatever addiction or habit has been controlling your life.

notOK

notOK features a large button that is pressed to let close friends, family and others in your support network know that you need help. Users can add up to five contacts to form their support network so that when they hit the panic button, the people closest to them will receive a text and their GPS location. The message reads: “Hey, I’m not OK! Please call, text, or come find me.”

Happify

Happify utilises a psychologist-approved mood training programme to put you in a good mood and get you back on the positive path. Through engaging games, activities, gratitude prompts and more, your brain is treated as a muscle that needs training to be its best and to overcome negative thoughts, anxieties, and pressures. Get your happy fix on Happify!

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