How mental wellness apps can help you cope during the pandemic

Occupational Therapists (OTs) help individuals with injuries, illnesses, or diseases explore ways to do things they need to do, want to do, and are expected to do. During the pandemic, the need for social distancing has created many obstacles for individuals to leave their homes or participate in meaningful and enjoyable activities.

During these difficult times, OTs can assist individuals to find ways to alleviate emotional challenges such as anxiety or depression caused by social isolation during the pandemic.

Some examples of how OTs can help people struggling with being confined to their homes are:

• Build a new routine that focuses on what an individual can do instead of what they cannot do.
• Break down activities such as home projects into manageable steps and set realistic and achievable goals.
• Teach and practice healthy coping strategies and skills such as finding solutions and resources to meet an individual’s different needs (e.g. using mental health apps to practice meditation or breathing exercises at home).

There are a number of mental health apps that OTs often recommend to assist clients in practicing healthy coping skills and strategies.  The apps are tools that can provide important support at a time when an individual is experiencing emotional challenges. While these apps cannot replace face-to-face therapy, they can play a complementary role outside of therapy.

Here are some mental health apps that may help you practice coping strategies at home:

• HeadSpace: This application helps you learn how to live mindfully. Each day offers a short clip of guided meditation. There are a variety of themed sessions on everything from stress and sleep to focus and anxiety. It also provides event SOS exercises you can do in the event of an emotional crisis. It engages animations to explain concepts which is suit for kids. It is a practice of mindfulness, meditation, and improving sleep.
   
• Calm: This application provides lots of meditations program and a robust curriculum including stories to help people improve their quality of sleep. “Daily Calm” new meditation is provided each day.  It is a practice of meditation, proper sleep, hygiene, relaxation techniques.
   
• Insight Timer: The application focuses on different types of meditation, including mindfulness meditation, children's meditation, Zen meditation, MBSR, walking meditation, breathing meditation, Kundalini yoga, transcendental meditation, sleep meditation, spiritual conversation, and more. It helps with managing anxiety, stress, sleep and self-esteem.
   
• Breethe: Meditation & sleep: This application includes learning how to meditate, getting more sleep, dealing with less stress and anxiety, experiencing a better performance at work, losing weight and more. It focuses on meditation, sleep and relaxation techniques.
   
• Moodfit: This application focuses on mood tracking, managing symptoms of depression and anxiety. Provide a self-assessment to help you determine the severity of your symptoms. Many articles and audio files can help you better understand what you are going through. The app's cognitive behavioural therapy section teaches you how to counter overly negative thoughts. Learn new skills like gratitude and mindfulness. You'll better understand what types of things affect how you feel -- like sleep, medications, and exercise.
   
• Daylio: This application helps people track their moods and activities to identify triggers to disorders. The user first selects a mood, selects activities around that mood, and records notes for more details. And then, it generates several views of all moods recorded over an extended time. It encourages people to record their moods and activities daily. It focuses on mood tracker, management of depression and anxiety symptoms.
   
• Moodpath: The application allows users to track and monitor their depression symptoms and share them with health providers. The app lets users answer questions about depressive symptoms every day for two weeks. At the end of the two weeks, the user's symptoms are summarized, and the health status is shared with the health providers.
   
• Depression CBT Self- Help Guide: This application provides education and methods about depression and managing symptoms. It encourages you to engage in self-care behaviors in order to positively improve your mood.
   
• Sanvello: This application provides users with cognitive behavioural therapy tools. They teach mindfulness skills and provide emotional and health tracking tools that can be used to improve mental and physical health. The app offers a easy self-assessment feature that helps you mark your emotions and identify your mood patterns. The app also offers progress evaluations, which can help you track your progress and set goals for the future.
   
• Mindfulness Coach: The application utilizes educational tools to summarize how incorporating mindfulness can alleviate both physical, emotional and mental stress and its benefits when used for individuals struggling with PTSD. Emphasizes on the present moment in efforts to alleviate anxiety and stress, and cope with chronic physical pain. This app focuses on PTSD, mood disorder, stress, anxiety.

In the current pandemic, mental health applications can offer some benefits for people with mental health challenges. However, it's important to remember that they are not intended as a replacement for therapy and treatment. Occupational therapists are able to help with mental health issues.

Please check our locations page to find a clinic near you or book one online if you're interested in an appointment with an occupational therapist. Lifemark has no financial interest in any of the apps listed.