Top 6 Phone Apps for Those Who Struggle With Mental Illness

As someone who has struggled with mental illness for over half of my life, I'm always looking for innovative ways to help myself cope. More recently, I've been using different apps that I've found on the app store and offer different things. If you're interested in or curious about apps that can help those with mental illness, I've written a little something about my favorites and those which have helped me, personally.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER!!!!!
I am NOT a mental health professional! These opinions are mine and my own. These apps do not substitute getting professional help, rather they can compliment and accompany whatever professional help you are using. 

Happier
This was one of the first apps I downloaded to help manage my anxiety and cultivate a grateful attitude. The tagline of the company is "Celebrate the Good Around You", which I think is super cute. You can put moments and memories into the app that, well, made you happier! I like putting in when I have lunch or coffee with friends at school and what specific moments made me happy in our fellowship. It also reminds you of them via notifications, so every once in a while, a "Remember when..." will pop up and give you a nice memory. You're even able to categorize the moments by different things. My most frequently used ones are family, friends, and faith, but you're able to personalize them in any way you want. Check out the website here

Pacifica

Pacifica is my all-time favorite app. I love it so much that I actually pay a fee for full access, although the free version is great, too! The makers are also always updating the app and improving it. It's based off of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), and you can track your mood anywhere between "awful" and "great". You also are able to do various activities that are guided by the app, including "relax", which has various meditations paired with calming soundscapes, and "thoughts", which acts as a journal of sorts.You can also join various communities based off hobbies and lifestyles and communicate with others similar to you. You can also track your health habits, such as hours slept, if you took your medication and showered, and, time spent outside, with friends, or exercising. A new feature is that you can add your own healthy habits, so I added the rosary to mine. You can then track your progress, and see how different things, like the activities offered and health habits, affect your overall well-being. It's great if you know there are certain "signs" that you're not in a good place, or if specific things can help you out. For example, when I'm really depressed or anxious, I don't do well with basic things like showering or brushing my teeth, and I notice that the more time spent with people, outside, exercising or praying, the happier I feel overall. You can download Pacifica here.

Color Therapy
Adult coloring books are all the rage nowadays. They have coloring books for almost anything imaginable, including Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Donald Trump, Harry Potter, The Psalms, New York City, Frozen, and much much more. Coloring is super helpful when you're feeling anxious or stressed, and I have a pretty impressive collection of adult coloring books in my dorm to prove just how enticing they are. However, lugging around all our coloring tools and books is difficult to do, and sometimes you don't want to do it while you're on a train or waiting in a doctor's office. Enter the color therapy app. It has a variety of things that you can color in, and every color imaginable. Now you can relax by adding color to a beautiful image anywhere! You can download Color Therapy here.

Mood Track Diary




This was one of the first apps I used to handle my mental illness. My therapist suggested that I start tracking my moods and the events/people surrounding them, so I did some research on the handy dandy App Store. This was the best one I found. I like how it tracks your emotions on a graph-like thing, and you can also share with others, which creates a nice community. It lets you put in whatever emotion you want, and then you can rank it as the "best" to the "worst" with five options. I love that it tracks your emotions over time with the option to write in whatever comments you'd like. You can also share the diary with others, which is really helpful if you're in therapy or on medication. You can download Mood Track Diary here.

ThinkUp
This is one of my newest discoveries. It's an affirmation app that comes pre-loaded with tons of positive affirmations for various aspects of life, including (but not limited to) body image, fitness, spirituality, studies, pregnancy, relationships and creativity. You also have the ability to enter your own positive affirmations, so I like to use some from The Littlest Way. You then say the the positive affirmation and record it in your own voice. You can play it back a few times with soundscapes in the background. I think it's super helpful. I've fallen out of the habit of daily affirmations, but I want to get back into them, and then will probably write a post about the power of them in our lives and the difference it made in my life. 'Till then, download ThinkUp here

Stigma

This is another app I found relatively recently. It markets itself as a personal and gratitude journal. You put an entry in and you can put important key words in the entry so that you can see trends in how specific people, places, things, events, and even weather has an effect on your emotional well-being. I've only used it a few times, but so far, I really like it. They just added an "anonymous penpal" option, which I don't think I'll use, but if something like that will be helpful for you, by all means, give it a try! You can download Stigma here.