Mental Health

Five apps to help boost your mental health and wellbeing

two hands using a smartphone

Lucy Cleave

Posted September 10, 2020

Got a case of the blahs? Here are five apps to help boost mental health and wellbeing.

During these trying and uncertain times, it's more important than ever to be checking in with your mental health. Aside from connecting with others, there are many useful tools that can help us better manage our own mental and emotional health. From gratitude apps to mindfulness tools, here are five apps that can help to give your mental health and wellbeing a boost. And, remember, if you or anyone you know is struggling to cope, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Five of the best apps for mental health and wellbeing

The Resilience Project

This daily wellbeing app helps you identify your emotions, record moments of gratitude and be more present each day. It’s designed for all ages by Melbourne-based group The Resilience Project, which delivers positive programs to schools, businesses and sports clubs to build resilience and promote mental wellbeing. The group was co-founded by Melbourne schoolteacher Hugh van Cuylenburg following a year spent volunteering at an underprivileged school in India. During this time, he marvelled at the resilience of his young students and set out to uncover the secrets of their positivity. His team recently incorporated their tried-and-tested gratitude, mindfulness and empathy strategies into this app, developed with Australian Unity. 

ReachOut WorryTime

Developed by ReachOut Australia, the online mental health organisation for young people and their parents, this app helps you set aside specified time to worry so you can get on with the rest of your day. When worries permeate your thoughts, they impact on your mood and your living. WorryTime lets you add or delete problems to or from your worry list whenever you like, but helps stop your negative thinking on them until your designated time slot. Dealing with your worries once a day rather than 24/7 is a simple idea – yet surprisingly effective.

 

woman listening to podcast near water

Take a moment to stop, breathe and relax with these mental health apps.

HelloMind

This app promotes ‘self-care’, the latest buzzword from the world of wellness. Gain access to short hypnotherapy programs, from five to 30 minutes, that help guide your subconscious into deep meditation. Designed to help uncover the root causes of negative thinking and self-sabotaging patterns of behaviour, HelloMind helps you to overcome these issues through positive, results-driven hypnosis. The app guides you to your own best treatment with some simple questions to help define your biggest issue of the moment and offers improved balance and clarity. Ommm.

Grateful

There’s a swag of recent scientific research to demonstrate that gratitude is an effective tool for improving mental health, and this clever little app helps harness that positive power. The Grateful app (available for iOs and Android devices) is a simple gratitude journal that uses prompts to help you to literally count your blessings. The app asks easy questions to help spark memories, like, ‘What made you smile today?’ It also allows you to add photos to your diary entries, offering visual gratitude triggers. The whole Grateful package makes looking back on past entries a guaranteed mood booster.

Smiling Mind

Developed by Melbourne woman Jane Martino in 2012, this fabulous, not-for-profit app recently reached a staggering four million downloads. Smiling Mind mindfulness and meditation programs are now used in homes, schools and workplaces across the country. The free app includes dozens of short, ten-minute exercises tailored to individual goals such as stress reduction, better sleep, improved focus and much more. The meditations are also designed for specific audiences, from young children to expectant mums, and non-English-speaking listeners. With an intuitive layout and easy-to-navigate tech, this R U OK-friendly app just keeps getting better.

 

If you or someone close to you is struggling with mental health, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.