Mental health has always been an incredibly important part of life, but only in recent years has it started to get the attention it deserves. Most of us could use some guidance in this area, especially after the effects of a global pandemic, 2 years of relative isolation and several lockdowns.

With that in mind, we at The Renaissaint have compiled a list of 10 great apps with various offerings that may help you stay on top of your mental health.

Shmoody

Shmoody describes itself as the “Swiss army knife of wellness”. A name it delivers on by providing a large variety of helpful functions that primarily target depression, anxiety, addiction and low mood. The app creators also claim to have gone through the ordeals mentioned above and based the app on how they themselves got through and manage in their own lives. Shmoody describes its key features as action plans, community, and weekly challenges. Action plans include activities like taking a day off work, to writing a gratitude list. The Shmoody community is described as a refuge for people going through similar experiences, especially those who find it hard to talk and the weekly challenges revolve around personal development and serve as another positive drive in Shmoody users’ lives.

Shmoody is absolutely free and available on the Google Play and the App Store

Breeze

This app aims to give users more awareness about their emotions and what factors in their lives are triggering negative thoughts. The app includes a daily mood tracker, negative thoughts tracker, and cognitive distortion tracker. The developer also states that they intend to include ‘advice from a psychotherapist’ function in the future. So if you’re after an app that will help you figure out some healthy practical changes you can make to your lifestyle, this could be the app for you.

Breeze is free, but some premium features are locked behind a subscription service costing £17 per month or £100 as an annual subscription.

Breeze is available on the Google Play and the App Store

Headspace

Headspace is a meditation app whose mission statement is to teach its users ‘the life-changing skills of meditation and mindfulness in just a few minutes a day’. Headspace is one of the more high-profile apps on this list and provides access to recorded sessions that you can use in the app or download and use offline. Headspace will require a membership payment in the long term, but you can get a 10-day beginner’s course as part of your free trial. So if you are looking for an app the helps you relax rather than provides you with psychological advice, this is probably the app for you. Assuming that you can spare £9.99 a month or £50 a year if you pay upfront. Since Headspace states that they already have over 40 million users, perhaps it is worth the money.

Headspace is available on the Google Play and the App Store

What’s Up? A Mental Health App

What’s Up? utilises cognitive behavioural therapy to help users combat depression. However, it complements this with Acceptance Commitment Therapy to help users combat depression, anxiety, stress and other low moods as efficiently as possible.

Some of the app’s features are:

A detailed description of twelve negative thinking patterns and the methods to beat them.
Ten metaphors designed to help users deal with negative thoughts.
A thought diary that includes an intensity rating scale out of ten.
A grounding game of more than one hundred questions to help you anchor yourself during periods of intense stress.
Three calming breathing techniques.

There are even more features to this app, and they sound as inventive and effective as those listed above. So if you’re struggling to cope with stress and negative thoughts, then this could be just the anchor you need! Best of all, it’s free; I guess you can’t put a price on good health…

What’s Up? – Mental Health App is available on the Google Play and the App Store

MindShift CBT – Anxiety Relief

MindShift is a self-help app that uses CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) strategies to help users manage anxiety. Some of the tools at a users disposal are belief experiments, comfort zone challenges and building fear ladders. MindShift also provides its users with calming audio to listen to and a community forum they can access. The developers pride themselves on being completely free and easy to use. They state that all their exercises are presented in small chunks with lots of supporting information to help users seamlessly integrate CBT into their lives. If you’re unfamiliar with CBT and mindfulness and looking for a supportive way into it, this app sounds like it could be great.

MindShift is available on the Google Play and the App Store

Motivation

This app does what it says on the tin… it motivates its users. It does this by providing daily motivational quotes. Users can choose how many positive quotes they wish to receive a day, and they will receive a custom push notification containing these quotes at the times they pre-selected. There is a premium and a free version available, so there is no reason not to try this app before you buy it and see if it pushes you to reach your goals! Premium only costs £1.66 a month (billed annually).

Motivation is available on Google Play and the App Store

Happify

As the name suggests, Happify is an app designed to make the user happier. So how does it do this? Well, Happify provides “Tracks”, which are courses users can undergo to work towards better mental health. Happify’s tracks are split into categories like personal growth, relationships, work and money. This formula allows users to focus on aspects of their lives that matter the most and branch out from there. Users can also view and track their “happiness score” to monitor their progress.

What’s quite interesting about Happify is that the apps content is developed by scientists and experts in psychology, cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness. Happify costs $14.95 (or £11.05) a month unless you make an annual payment which takes it to a $6.95 (or £5.13) per month equivalent.

Happify is available on Google Play and the App Store

Rise Up + Recover: An Eating Disorder Monitor

Rise up + Recover is an eating disorder recovery app. It contains dietary monitoring and management tools for multiple eating disorders like Anorexia, Bulimia and Binge Eating.

What impresses me about this app is its utility; lots of mental health apps that target disorders tend to target one disorder and specialise in that but Rise Up + Recover tries to help people who are struggling to increase how much they are eating as well as people who are focusing on decreasing their intake. No one gets left behind.

The app comes with a meal log, emotion tracker, a coping skills section and the ability to download PDF summaries. All of these features indicate a supportive and practical app to help you take accountability for your progress.

Rise Up + Recover: An Eating Disorder Monitor is available on Google Play and the App Store

Calm

Calm is a sleep and meditation app that states it is recommended by top psychologists, therapists and mental health experts. Like many other mental health apps, Calm offers users ‘sessions’ on areas users may want to improve in their lives from an extensive list including forgiveness, non-judgement, deep sleep, and stress management. The sessions involve guided meditation and are available in various lengths, from three to twenty five minutes.

Some other interesting features available in the app are:

A Daily Calm: A daily ten-minute program to help you relax and/or sleep.
100+ Sleep Stories: adult bedtime stories guaranteed to lull you to sleep.
Relaxation-based breathing exercises.
Daily streaks to motivate daily app usage.
A viewable “time spent meditating” tracker to see how far users have come.

A Calm subscription costs $12.99 a month or $59.99 a year.

Calm is available on the Google Play and the App Store

Relax Now: Hypnosis Meditation

Relax Now is a somewhat quirkier meditation app that incorporates hypnotherapy into its available material, including recordings with David Ridgeway, a certified hypnotherapist. The meditations on the app are supposed to either energise you in the morning or relax you at night. This app also offers users ‘tracks’; but theirs are a combination of spoken narration and ‘soothing, uplifting binaural music’ put together by Ridgeway. It also comes with an eBook of fifty tips for living a healthier lifestyle.

Relax Now is available on the App Store

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