On hand: 10 applications for dealing with stress and depression
Dasha Tatarkova
Smartphones and wearable gadgets They have long helped us monitor our health, but it is not at all necessary to limit ourselves to counting steps or monitoring heartbeats. According to experts, more than 350 million people on the planet suffer from only depressive disorder - and it is very convenient to monitor your psychological state with a telephone. Of course, applications are not a qualified specialist help, but they will help control your condition and foresee the moment when it is precisely time to see a doctor.
Calm
iOS: is free; Android: is free
The name says it all: this app will help you relax even on the most nervous day. People who suffer from anxiety are often advised to try meditation in one form or another, and this is especially convenient when using a smartphone. Even the title site Calm instantly helps to relax, and the application itself offers dozens of meditations, tracks with ambient music, sounds of nature and so on - everything to take a useful break during the day and quietly go to bed in the evening. All basic meditations are available for free, and those who want more will need to buy a subscription for a month or a year.
Happify
iOS: is free; Android: is free
Western culture, aimed at all the time to be happy, in itself, often turns out to be the cause of depression: to be constantly on edge with happiness is a difficult and tedious task. However, do not let "happy" in the title push you away: this application aims to teach the user not to distance himself from his feelings and enjoy life. Happify helps break the habit of negative thinking and teaches us to look at the world in a new, positive way. Simple exercises are disguised as simple games that the creators invented, relying on the results of scientific research on the psychology of happiness. As usual, initially free, the application eventually offers a subscription - for a month or a year.
Headspace
iOS: is free; Android: is free
The best advertisement for this meditation application was made by Emma Watson, having written about him on Twitter - now her quote, of course, hangs on the site. If for the Watson Headspace itself works, then he wants to give a chance - especially since the application was invented by a Buddhist monk from England, Andy Padicomb. He set out to popularize meditation, and over the years his startup has grown into a huge community and application of the same name. Beautiful and simple Headspace helps to choose a meditation program to your taste, depending on the circumstances and free time. How exactly meditation helps our consciousness can be read on the site. Andy himself recommends that you meditate in the morning and claims that it helps to cope with stress during the next day. Annual subscription is of two types: regular and biting - for $ 100 a year.
How are you
iOS: $12,99; Android: 672.56 rub.
"More than 80% of people with symptoms of depression do not receive proper treatment," says a banner on How Are You, and this is one of the main reasons for the existence of all such applications. Honest and frank interaction with your phone, as well as visual statistics help to realize whether a person really needs help, as well as decide on a trip to a specialist. How Are You not only asks its owner, how are you, but also closely monitors all the information that he is informed. With the help of regular tests, useful tips, visual analysis (for example, which part of the day is most joyful), the application helps to improve your mood, and accordingly, the standard of living, day after day.
I can be calm
iOS: is free; Android: is free
I Can Be Anything is 12 intuitive minimalistic applications for a variety of life tasks. Developers from Denmark offer their users to become what they want: fearless, confident, motivated, and so on. To cope with stress, stress and anxiety, you should choose I Can Be Calm. Like other applications in the series, Calm is, in fact, audio trainings that need to be listened to once a day for two weeks. The expression "audiotrening" still brings back memories of senseless cassettes from the 90s that promised to attract money, but the creators of I Can Be Anything claim that their application has nothing to do with such quackery and relies on the latest research in brain neuroplasticity.
Lantern
iOS: is free
Many applications that help to control one's mental state rely on the so-called cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy, which combines work with the way of thinking and human behavior. One of the popular services working in this vein - Lantern from San Francisco - helps its users develop skills to understand and control their emotions. Specific programs are created with the participation of American psychotherapists, and specially trained trainers help them to perform them. An iOS application is rather an addition to the course that a user takes on the site, but it offers daily personalized trainings to help cope with stress, stress, and anxiety.
Moodnotes
iOS: $3,99
A new application to control your mood, which has all the prerequisites to become an international sensation. The developers of one of the most beautiful mobile games "Monument Valley" and psychologists from Thriveport have teamed up to make Moodnotes - an application that helps analyze your emotions and fight depression. At first, the user simply describes everything that he feels, but over time begins to keep a whole journal. Many psychological and medical applications sin with a clip-art of zero or excess in the interface, so a good electronic diary should not only be based on a scientific basis, but also be clear and beautiful. Moodnotes meets all these requirements - and while there is no Android app, you can already use it on the Apple Watch, marking with one touch how you feel today.
Moodtools
iOS: is free; Android: is free
Another application that helps to cope with depression and just a bad mood. MoodTools offers everything at once: to record your emotions, all the affairs of the day and the reaction to them, offers useful information for self-help and even a YouTube video on the subject. One of the important functions is the ability to provide a special plan in case of suicidal thoughts to prevent a catastrophe. Everything together is a slightly fragmented, but useful way to collect very different information about yourself, which can be analyzed independently, and can be shown to a specialist, which will never be superfluous. In addition, recording your own experiences is already a useful psychological practice in itself.
Pacifica
iOS: is free; Android: is free
Personally faced with the difficulties that a constant alarm imposes on even the simplest actions during the day, the developers from San Francisco decided to make an application that would bypass costly trips to the psychotherapist to at least make life easier for their users. Pacifica - as the elder brother of the previous application, however, aimed primarily at combating stress and anxiety. Pacifica also helps to memorize your emotions and analyze them, but also offers two ways to use this information: set yourself tasks or use meditation to breathe out and calm down. Completion of small, but frightening tasks has a very positive effect on the psyche and helps build a new approach to their implementation, even for those who have anxiety surpasses Another good application working in the same direction is Stress & Anxiety Companion.
Stop, Breathe & Think
iOS: is free; Android: is free
A meditation application that is ideal for those who suffer not only from constant anxiety, but also from panic attacks or aggression. Stop, Breathe & Think teaches you not only to relax, but also to concentrate, become aware of your presence here and now, look for the causes of stress and just be kinder. Five minutes a day is all that is needed to begin the path to a conscious, calm life. Meditation, according to developers who rely on medical research, should help improve not only the mental but also the physical state of the user, because improper attempts to resist stress can damage the whole body. Invented Stop, Breathe & Think, the initiators of the Tools for Peace program, promoting the idea of the benefits of meditation to the masses.