Great Apps for Mental Health
I often talk with clients about how screen time negatively affects their mood and anxiety. However, there are also some really wonderful ways technology can support your mental health. These are convenient, easy-to-use apps that I often recommend.
Mood Meter: There are a million mood trackers out there. I like this one in particular, because you can identify different “shades” of your mood. I think it helps identify more nuanced feelings than a more basic scale, and empowers you to decide if you want to shift your mood or stay where you are. There are multiple benefits to mood tracking: you can notice patterns in how you feel, and when we start to bring awareness to our feelings, it allows us to cope with them and show ourselves compassion.
Finch: I have a colleague describe Finch as “a combination of a tamagotchi and self-care”. You take care of a bird, and help it grow by completing self-care activities. I love that goal setting can be as simple as “get out of bed or something bigger like “sign up to walk for a cause”. And there are great relaxation and grounding practices to use when you’re overwhelmed.
TrichStop: This is a CBT-based self-monitoring app for compulsive hair pulling (trichotillomania). The first step in decreasing compulsive hair-pulling (and other Body Focused Repetitive Behaviors) is to increase your awareness of the behavior. TrichStop helps you monitor when/where/why you’re pulling, and the progress you’re making.
CBT Mindshift: CBT Mindshift was created by Anxiety Canada (incidentally, their website has a ton of great downloadable worksheets), and walks you through several cognitive behavioral tools like cognitive restructuring, exposure, and behavioral experiments.
Tappy: A client introduced me to Tappy, a fidget app that utilizes haptics (the little buzzes on your phone) to feel like you’re really fidgeting with something. There are so many different fidgets in this one app, I lost count!
Anxiety Challenger: Need some structure and motivation to do exposures? Anxiety Challenger helps you set up an exposure hierarchy, assign points to each challenge, and can remind you to complete your exposures. It’s like playing a game to show anxiety that you’re in charge!
Lens Changer (iOS, Andriod): Lens Changer is an app that leads parents through the Collaborative and Proactive Solutions steps (or “Plan B” in the book “The Explosive Child” by Ross Green). This is great if you need a reminder of how to work on problem solving with your kiddo, whether that’s in preparation for an upcoming challenge, or something that is repeatedly difficult.