Introduction to Mental Health Apps
In an increasingly digital world, apps can be a powerful tool for maintaining good mental health and overall wellbeing, providing incredibly useful tools in therapy not only for clients but also for the therapists themselves.
Features and Functions of Mental Health Apps
There are a variety of apps available that can be used to support mental health challenges such as anxiety, depression, and stress. These apps provide things such as guided meditations, breathing exercises, journaling prompts, and even CBT exercises, which over time can help individuals to manage their symptoms.
Apps also offer a range of features that are supportive of users in staying on track during their therapeutic journey, such as providing reminders and progress tracking which can result in a greater sense of autonomy and control for the individual.
There are also apps designed specifically for therapists, such as those for scheduling appointments and keeping detailed notes on client progress.
Recently I was invited to contribute to a blog post by the soul-centred psychotherapist, therapeutic counsellor and coach, Jodie Gale, which is entitled “The Best Apps for Therapists as Recommended by Therapists”. The app that I recommended is called Daylio.
If you're looking for an easy and effective way to track your daily moods and activities, Daylio is a great option! The app's user-friendly visual interface makes it simple to log your mood and add any notes or photos throughout the day. You can choose from a range of moods and customize your own mood icons, as well as record daily activities to identify patterns and triggers that may be impacting your mood.
One of the benefits of Daylio is its simplicity and ease of use. You can quickly log your mood and add any additional information via the intuitive interface without feeling overwhelmed by the app's features.
The ability to customize your own mood icons and add custom activities also makes the app feel more personalized to your specific needs.
It offers helpful statistics and graphs to help you to gain insight into your mood patterns over time – the more you use it, the more powerful the insights you can achieve.
By tracking your daily activities alongside your moods, you can gain insights into what activities or circumstances tend to make you feel better or worse and this information can be used to adjust your routine or make other changes that can improve your emotional well-being.
Daylio can also help you develop a greater awareness of your emotions. By checking in with yourself regularly and reflecting on your daily moods, you can start to recognize the patterns in how you're feeling and better understand your emotional states.
This can help you manage your emotions more effectively and develop strategies for coping with difficult feelings.
It also helps with tracking your progress over time. The app offers statistics and graphs that can help you visualize your mood patterns, and you can see how your moods have changed over the course of days, weeks, or months.
This can be helpful in recognizing when you're making progress or when you might need to make adjustments to your routine or coping strategies.
I have been using the app myself and at the time of writing this I am on a streak of 1030 days.
I’m someone who, like many of my clients, can struggle with forming new habits so the fact I have made at least one daily entry for nearly 3 years speaks volumes about the ease of use.
