Your mental health and wellbeing can directly affect your quality of life. It is therefore important that you pay extra attention to your mental wellbeing. Issues like self-hate, depression, self-harm, and suicide can result from untreated mental health conditions.
In addition to social media and other means of communication, there are specialized, professionally-approved apps that are designed to keep you grounded when negative thoughts, urges to self-harm, and suicidal thoughts overwhelm you. Let’s check them out.
1. distrACT
distrACT is an app approved by the NHS in the UK that is designed to help you overcome self-harm and suicidal thoughts. The app provides you easy, quick, and discreet access to information provided by doctors and experts in self-harm and suicide prevention.
If you have been feeling the urge to self-harm or battling suicidal thoughts, distrACT can help you to better understand why you feel the way you feel. It will also help you to manage your symptoms and recommend safer alternatives, plus gives you access to professional care.
Inside distrACT’s ChillZone, you can find uplifting art, books, poems, quotes, stories, films, music, and online videos carefully curated to help you feel better. distrACT is available to person’s who are 17 years and older.
Download: distrACT for Android | iOS (Free)
2. Calm Harm
The urge to self-harm is like a wave and can feel overwhelming. When it comes, an app like Calm Harm can help you to ride it out. It is an app specifically designed to help you resist or manage the urge to self-harm.
Based on the principles of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), Calm Harm employs talking therapy which has been proven to be effective in helping people with mood disorders.
Just like distrACT, Calm Harm features activities and tasks designed to help you distract your mind from urges to self-harm so that you can manage or ride out your wave in a more positive way.
Download: Calm Harm for Android | iOS (Free)
3. Cove
Music has been proven to have a calming effect. This is the reason why many self-harm and suicide prevention apps feature different forms of music therapy. Cove lets you journal your moods via music.
Cove allows you to create and curate personalized mood music that captures how you’re feeling per time instead of expressing them with words in a journal or diary. This is especially important if you lack words to express how you feel.
Cove lets you create mood music by choosing from six different moods, such as calm, struggling, longing, playful, clouded, and gentle. You can store the music you create this way in a private journal to which you can append your personal thoughts and tags. Cove is NHS-approved and is only currently available on iOS.
Download: Cove for iOS (Free)
4. WorryTree
Don’t Worry, Be Happy is a popular song by Bobby McFerrin that hints at what it feels like to be dealing with worry. Just like Bobby’s hit song, WorryTree is designed to help you manage your anxiety and live worry-free.
WorryTree works based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). It allows you to record, track, monitor, and manage your worries effectively whether they are about work, business, love, family, money, or health.
The app asks you about your current worries, helps you decide if you can control or accept them, offers suggestions on how to distract yourself, and allows you to create a personalized action plan to help you manage your worries.
Download: WorryTree for Android | iOS (Free)
5. ThinkNinja
One of the reasons why many young people succumb to self-harm and suicide is the feeling of helplessness and being overwhelmed that comes with it. ThinkNinja can help your young ones to build up their mental stamina.
It helps your 10 to 18-year-olds to learn about mental health, develop emotional wellbeing, and help them to build resilience. These skills can be life-saving when they are confronted with tough times and the uncertainties of life.
Inside the app’s Skill Zone, your children can learn breathing techniques, and how to identify and manage their emotions inside the My Challenges section. There’s also a section to help them unwind with selected audio recordings and mood music to help release tension.
Download: ThinkNinja for Android | iOS (Free)
6. MyPossibleSelf
When your thoughts and feelings get out of control, it can be difficult to be your best self. MyPossibleSelf is a mental health app that allows you to take control of your thoughts and feelings so that you can be your best self.
The app contains simple learning modules that help you to identify and manage your fears, anxiety, and stress. It also acts as a journal allowing you to record your feelings and track symptoms as well as triggers.
It contains different modules about building happiness and well-being, communicating clearly, increasing pleasurable activities, managing fear and anxiety, managing loss and major life changes, managing stress and overload, and more.
Download: MyPossibleSelf for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
7. Stress & Anxiety Companion
Stress and anxiety are daily life occurrences for many. Learning how to manage your work-related stress can be a life-changer. Stress & Anxiety Companion app helps you to deal with your stress and anxiety on the go in a fun and easy way.
The app uses a selection of breathing exercises, relaxing music, and fun games to help you calm your mind and transform negative thought patterns that can harm your mental health.
The app is NHS-approved and is also based on CBT. Use it to identify your anxiety and stress triggers and transform harmful negative thoughts into positive thoughts which you can share with friends and family as feel-good photo cards.
Download: Stress & Anxiety Companion for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
8. MeeToo
Teenage years can be challenging and life-changing for both teens and their parents. If you have a teen who needs help with managing their mental health, MeeToo can be of significant help.
The app focuses on helping teenagers by providing a safe and secure forum where they can discuss issues that bother or affect them in an open and non-judgmental way.
Expert moderators and other teenagers share their advice and experiences with other teens who are experiencing challenges with relationships, friendships, bullying, depression, self-harm, and other mental health issues.
Download: MeeToo for Android | iOS (Free)
9. Feeling Good
If you are 18+, worried and stressed out about your mental health, concentration, and confidence, the Feeling Good app can help you to restore calm, concentration, confidence, and self-esteem.
Feeling Good also uses CBT, relaxation, and resilience-building techniques from sports to help you to boost your self-confidence, self-esteem, and create an overall positive feeling.
Feeling Good features four free audio tracks that combine mood music with coaching. There’s also a 12 track Positive Mental Training program that helps to introduce, reinforce, and entrench positive mindsets that make you feel good and better about yourself. This feature is available as an in-app purchase.
Download: Feeling Good for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
Don’t Succumb to Negative Thoughts and Self-Harm
All these apps can help you to regain control over your mental health in one way or the other and improve your quality of life. Identify which ones directly address your needs and take them out for a spin.
Whatever you do, do not go it alone, seek help from trained and qualified professionals and use these apps to help you master your thoughts and overcome urges to self-harm and suicidal tendencies.