There are so many mental health apps and software tools, it can be a bit daunting to find the right ones. In no particular order, the list below includes tools and apps recommended by professionals within the mental health industry.

Software Tools & Apps for Mental Health

Virtual Hope Box: National Center for Telehealth & Technology

Developed by the National Center for Telehealth & Technology, the Virtual Hope Box (VHB) is a smartphone application designed for use by patients and their behavioral health providers as an accessory to treatment. VHB contains simple tools to help patients with coping, relaxation, distraction and positive thinking.

Both patients and providers can work together to personalize the VHB content on the patient’s smartphone according to their specific needs. Then, the app can be used away from the clinic, continuing to add or change content as needed.

Mood Tracker: Online Tools for Depression and Bipolar Disorder

Online Mood Tracker helps bipolar and depression patients manage medications using graphical mood charts, a mood journal and text-message reminders to take medications and enables caregiver  information sharing.

PatientsLikeMe

The worlds largest personalized health network that helps people find new treatments, connect with others and take action to improve their outcomes. This digital health learning system uses the most advanced technologies to help patients better understand wellness, aging, and disease.

Calm App

A paid app (it does offer a free trial) for meditation techniques, sleep and stress reduction.  This app has been downloaded over 26 million times and has over 225,000 5-star reviews — it’s the #1 app for mindfulness and wellness according to its website. The Calm App has been named Apple’s App of the Year and Editors Choice by Google Play.

Moment App

This iOS app automatically tracks how much you use your iPhone and iPad each day. If you determine that those devices are being used too much, daily limits can be set along with notifications to alert you when you’ve gone over your limit.

Moment Family will allow you to manage your family’s screen time from your own phone and set up time for your entire family to be screen free using family dinner time. You can enforce limits when someone, including you. is using their device too much.

SelfControl 

A free Mac application and open-source application that lets you block access to distracting websites, your mail servers, or anything else on the internet. Users can set a specific amount of time to block for and can add specific sites to their blacklist — until that timer expires, they will be unable to access those sites even if your computer is restarted or the application is deleted.

Health Storylines

Designed for the patient, Health Storylines safely stores and tracks information about your medications, symptoms, mood, weight, blood pressure and more. Patients can then share a summary of their health with their doctor.

Mindfulness Coach: National Center for PTSD

The Mindfulness Coach mobile app will help you practice mindfulness meditation. What is mindfulness? It’s grounding yourself in the present moment and it’s been shown to be helpful for reducing stress and coping with unpleasant thoughts and emotions. Features include:

• Education about the benefits of mindfullness
• Mindfulness exercises to practice on your own or with guidance
• Strategies to help overcome challenges to mindfulness practice
• Log of mindfulness exercises to track your progress
• Reminders to encourage continued practice

PFA Mobile (Psychological First Aid)

Designed to assist responders who provide psychological first aid (PFA) to adults, families and children as part of an organized response effort.

PTSD Coach

A mobile app to help you learn about and manage symptoms that can occur after trauma. PTSD coach has been dowloaded over 100,000 times in 74 countries around the world. Features include:

• Reliable information on PTSD and treatments that work
• Tools for screening and tracking your symptoms
• Convenient, easy-to-use tools to help you handle stress symptoms
• Direct links to support and help
• Always available to you

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We’d love to keep adding to this list, so if you have additional apps that you use and recommend, please email editor@behavioralhealth360.com with the blog post title “Software Tools and Apps Recommended By Mental Health Advocates” as your subject line.

Would you like your mental or behavioral health app to be featured on the BH360º Podcast? Then send an email to podcast@behavioralhealth360.com.

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