Mental Health & Coaching Apps
FOR ANXIETY
MINDSHIFT – a total SELF-HELP app for anxiety, includes Psychoeducation, self-test, creating a personalized plan, lots of CBT positive self-talk “realistic thinking”, relaxation exercises, visualizations, mindfulness strategies, inspirational quotes, it’s super comprehensive. For more info, you can go to the website AnxietyBC.
CBT TOOLS for YOUTH (includes for Kids) $2.99 – total CBT for youth and kids, rate your feelings, intensity level, identify physical symptoms, what happened (thinking, tools used to feel better and improvement?), and learn tools – relaxation skills, positive actions, thinking skills – and you can EMAIL YOUR THERAPIST!!!
DARE – evidence based training program to help people overcome anxiety, panic attacks, worry, and insomnia. You can track your progress daily with the mood journal. Based on the best selling book ‘DARE’ that helps people overcome anxiety and panic attacks fast.
CLEAR FEAR– uses the evidence-based treatment CBT to focus on learning to reduce the physical responses to threat through relaxation and breathing, challenging unhelpful ways of thinking, overcoming avoidance, facing certain phobias, and reducing over-checking in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Users can create a customized plan for dealing with their fear and anxiety.
FOR DEPRESSION
MOOD TOOLS – includes PHQ-9 self-test, guided meditations (caution with the “Healing Spirit” ones), soothing sounds, thought diary, activity diary (track mood before and after) and safety plan
DAYLIO (a client of mine loves this, she introduced it to me) – very simple and easy, you track mood and activities – great for behavioral activation
Calm Harm provides different categories that users are able to rely on to ride out the wave of self-harm. These categories include:
-Distract: Helps you with learning self-control
-Comfort: Helps you care rather than harm
-Express Yourself: Helps you get harmful feelings out in a healthy way
-Release: Helps provide safe alternatives to self-injury
-Breath: Helps you increase relaxation and increase feeling calm
FOR FAMILIES
Q and U – Lots of thought provoking questions – kids, teens, couples – can be used during family time, in the car, restaurant, family dinner, with friends, on dates…
Homey – assign family chores, transfer allowance teach financial responsibility
CHRISTIAN APPS
ABIDE – Christian meditation, on various topics, with scripture, audio devotional, can journal, help with anxiety, sleep, emotions
YOUVERSION Bible App – read the bible in various versions, devotionals, all kinds of topics – the largest used Christian app the Explore section has “what does the bible say about…?”, “How are you feeling?” “Bible Stories” and Beautiful Scripture images
JESUS CALLING – $9.99 – the mobile version for best selling Christian book/devotional Jesus Calling, will give you a daily devotional per date with scripture so helpful for people struggling with anxiety, depression, chronic pain, grief and difficult life circumstances. Can also look up by topic.
KIDS VERSION “JESUS CALLING”: 365 Devotions for Kids” $9.99
PORN ADDICTION/SEXUAL COMPULSIVITY
FORTIFY– 12+ – program for youth and adults struggling with porn addiction – $ www.joinfortify.com
COVENANT EYES – internet filtering and accountability – $ www.covenanteyes.com
VICTORY – brand-new companion app to Covenant Eyes. Victory works alongside the Covenant Eyes app to deliver world-class accountability reporting. TWO APPS. ONE SIMPLE PATH TO VICTORY.
BRAIN TRAINING/EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING
Lumosity
Left brain/right brain
Time Timer App
Elevate
Peak
Cognifit
Fit Brains and Fit Brains for Kids (ages 2-8)
iProcrastinate
Muse
Feel Stress Free
Zenytime
STUDY SKILLS
Study Stack – index cards study cards
Quizlet
Brainly.com
SOCIAL SKILLS
How Would You Feel If …ages 6 and up (iOS, $1.99) … poses that question in 56 different life situations designed to lead to discussions of a child’s reaction and feelings. Each illustrated “card” asks a question, such as, “How would you feel if your favorite football team lost?” The appropriate and incorrect responses receive feedback, and a child’s results can be viewed on a graph.
Model Me Going Places- ages 3 and up (iOS, free) – This app presents slideshows of children modeling appropriate behavior in everyday places, such as school, a store, or a restaurant. Each slide is accompanied by audio narration and descriptive text. Model Me Going Places helps reinforce expected behavior and lessens the fear of new places in a child with autism or Asperger’s syndrome. Be aware that the app contains advertisements for the company’s line of social-skills DVDs. [Free Guide: 14 Ways to Help Your Child Make Friends]
Touch and Learn-Emotions – ages 4 and up (iOS; free) – Photos of children with different facial expressions provide safe practice in recognizing feelings. Accompanying audio guides the user in trying to identify which child is showing which emotion. This program helps children with developmental delays learn to read body language and recognize and name common emotions.
Social Adventures (iOS; $9.99) – Created by parents, Social Adventures offers an eight-week social skills awareness program that can double as individual lessons as needed for practicing relationship behaviors and initiating interactions. Designed for children with autism spectrum disorders and social difficulties, this app offers valuable practice in thinking about and behaving during a variety of social situations.
WORKING MEMORY
COGMED WORKING MEMORY TRAINING (cogmed.com) — the only working memory product with double-blind studies to back up its claims. Cogmed is a research-based, clinically proven computer program designed to improve memory capacity through targeted, regimented exercises. Through a series of 12 challenging games, the Cogmed program aims to enhance verbal, visual, and spatial memory. Cogmed may create changes in the brain that improve memory.
ELEVATE (iOS and Android) — an app that personalizes a training regimen for each user, depending on his or her goals. The user can play 30-plus games that boost memory skills, focus, and processing speed. The games are designed in collaboration with experts in neuroscience and cognitive learning.
FLASHCARDS+ (iOS) — an engaging and fast-paced app to bolster the studying process and exercise working memory. Users can choose subjects and categories from a user-curated bank of topics or create their own flashcards. The app also allows you to track your results and your speed. [Test: Does Your Child Have a Working Memory Deficit?]
STACKING (Available on Amazon.com) — a puzzle video game that requires players to use working-memory skills. You start as a small stacking doll and you must “stack” into larger dolls of the same variety to solve the puzzle. Players must recall where they discovered those dolls in each level.
BRAIN AGE (Nintendo 3DS) — a fun set of games and exercises to challenge the brain. There are three different versions of the game, all of which challenge working-memory skills, using math and logic activities. In “Head Count,” a player sees a house in which stick figures enter from the left and exit from the right. The task is to count the people as they move in and out, figuring out how many people are in the house at the end of the game.
SUDOKU (Android, iOS, Facebook, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 3, PSP, and online) — a popular game, available as an app, on consoles, and online that requires players to make informed choices, trying different combinations of numbers to narrow down the possible answers. Players have to retain information as they continue solving the puzzle.
SIMON SAYS CLASSIC AND EXTREME (iOS) — a video game with working memory exercises that require players to memorize an ever-increasing sequence of colors and sounds. It can be played in a four-color mode, or the more challenging nine-color mode.
DUAL N-BACK GAME (iOS and Android) — A classic working-memory training app with solid research to back up the benefits. In general, N-Back tasks present an ongoing sequence of stimuli (in this case, pictures), and the player’s job is to indicate when the picture he sees matches a picture that was seen “n” steps earlier in the sequence. One study suggests that playing N-Back games can result in long-term working-memory improvement.
MEMORY BIRDS N-BACK GAME (iOS and Android) — a fun memory-based video game directed at younger kids that exercises visual-spatial working memory. Players are given a sequence of birds to remember and then asked to recall a step in that sequence. As questions are answered, the sequence gets longer. When a player answers all of the questions correctly, he earns stars.
HEALTH AND FITNESS
Coming Soon…