5 apps to boost your mental health

Our time spent in front of a screen and our mental health issues are only increasing by the day. Fortunately, this time when we turn to our screens, it will do us more good than harm. Over the past few years, mental health apps have worked wonders to improve the user’s emotional well being, help them being more mindful, and cope well with stress and anxiety. 

A host of them are affordable, user-friendly and give a personalised experience, thus helping the user. Here, we separate the best from the rest. 

Headspace

Here’s an app with a wealth of resources to prompt you to practice mindfulness. Their extensive library features soothing, themed meditations as well as activities, dance classes, and sleepscasts (combination of sound and visualisation that creates idle condition for resftful sleep) among more. Whether you’re dealing with grief, anger, or stress, you can find a session to help you relax at that time. Their targeted SOS sessions are designed to calm you down within minutes. The app also offers a wide range of meditations for beginners and experienced users that range from 3 to 20 minutes, ensuring that you’re able to fit meditation into your busy day. You can customise your practice to focus on specific goals such as improving sleep, managing stress or enhancing performance. It also has courses where beginners can learn more about guided meditation. These include learning the basics of mindfulness, coping with cravings, dealing with distractions, and better sleep.

While the app is free to download, upgrade to premium to access all the courses—subscription plans start from ₹120.

Calm

Staying true to its name, the resources of this app—ranging from guided meditations to grown-up bedtime stories (read by celebrities)—are designed specifically to help you get a better night’s sleep. Available for both iPhone and Android users around the world, the app also has an extensive music library that includes soothing, ambient sounds. While their ‘calm body’ feature offers stretching and yoga videos to help one relax, their ‘calm kids’ section caters to the tiny tots with a series of meditation exercises, lullabies and peaceful sounds.

You can test Calm Premium with a free seven-day trial—that includes timed meditations, sleep scenes, one bedtime story and one breathing exercise—before committing to a subscription. 

Sanvello

Sanvello offers a wide range of self-care resources based on the principles of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). The app’s library of tools includes guided meditation sessions, mood and health tracking features, and audio “Guided Journeys” that can help you build essential life skills and coping strategies. Available on iOS and Android, the app helps users across four areas—self-care, peer support, coaching, and therapy enabling them to get help when they need it, no matter where they are on the mental wellness spectrum or how much support they could use at the moment. Another feature that stands out is mood tracking, where the user can trace their patterns over time and see the areas to improve and make those changes accordingly. 

Wysa

An app that’s rated as one of the best mental health apps in the country, Wysa is your cute, emotional health buddy and well being tracker that each one of us could do with. There is no reason for users to be apprehensive about sharing their feelings and what they’re going through as it is a secure platform and allows the user to he anonymous to prevent the user’s identity from getting breached. Conversation is key in Wysa as the caring chatbots help you deal with various problems by suggesting meditation and mindfulness audios. The free version has a lot to offer—there is a set of exercises for every problem you choose and you cannot skip any set. However, to be able to access a therapist for live audio, text, or video support, one must choose a premium package.

Meditopia

Meditopia tailors a programme for you based on a list of emotions and issues you state. This personalisation makes it highly-popular among the users. In the free version, you get daily personal goals, meditation techniques, and offline app usage for a week. To access it offline in the future, you need to opt for its premium plan. With it, you also get access to the mindfulness library on the app that consists of articles, relaxing sounds, music, inspiration, and meditations to deal with all challenges.