Today there are apps for just about everything: whether it’s getting food delivered to your door, online shopping or helping you manage your finances. Apps can also hold great potential as mental health and wellbeing tools. We’ve put together a selection that have been tested and recommended by our Caraniche at Work clinicians.
While these apps are useful as self-guided tools, they can also be used very effectively in conjunction with professional counselling, particularly if you’d like more in-depth support to address workplace or personal challenges.
Smiling mind is a mindfulness meditation app designed to provide children and adults with mindfulness tools. It was developed by psychologists and educators and includes a range of different programs based on age or purpose. For example, returning to school, mindfulness in the work place, and mindfulness in sport. The app can measure progress and skills, as well as set daily meditation reminders. As your meditation skills develop, the sessions become more advanced.
ReachOut Breathe is an app designed to help users reduce the physical symptoms of stress and anxiety. With simple visuals, it helps you to control your breath and measures your heart rate using the camera on your phone. This helps you actively address physical stress symptoms such as shortness of breath, increased heart rate and tightening of the chest.
Music eScape taps into your music library and creates a playlist based on your mood! Anchored in the knowledge that music can impact our mood, the app allows you to create or select a music journey to express, enhance or change your mood.
Sleepbot is a sleep tracking app designed to help users learn more about the quality of their sleep. The app’s built-in audio and motion recording can track your movements throughout the night, as well as detect snoring, sleep talking and any disturbances in your sleep. Users can then view their results each morning in a variety of graphs, which show periods of deep and light sleep activity, sleep length and wake times. Additionally Sleepbot has a ‘smart’ alarm that aims to detect when you’re in light sleep to wake you at the best possible time (within a 30-minute window before a time of your choosing).
The 7 minute workout challenge is a research backed work-out program that only requires a chair, a wall and your own body weight. Twelve high intensity exercises with video and audio instructions are performed for 30 seconds with 10 second rest intervals. To increase motivation, you can earn rewards, set up daily reminders, unlock different exercises and track your progress visually.
Lumosity is a brain training app that has a suite of engaging games designed to challenge, and potentially improve, cognitive skills. It is designed to be customised by the user to address five basic categories of cognitive processes: Speed, Memory, Attention, Flexibility, and Problem Solving. Users can also track their progress in each category over time, both in comparison to past scores as well as to others in their age group.
Quit That! is an app designed to help you track anything you want to quit or reduce. Whether you want to quit smoking, stop drinking sugary drinks or reduce your coffee consumption, Quit That! allows you to track your progress, including monitoring the money you may have saved in the process.
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