Chances are, you use your smartphone for far more than just making calls. On any given day you might use it to text, check your email, browse the Internet, or use an app. But did you know your smartphone can also help you manage major depression?
There are countless mental health apps for people who want to track their mood, cope with anxiety, test themselves for depression, improve their sleep, and follow a healthy lifestyle. But knowing how to find reputable, effective mental health apps is no small feat.
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has not yet issued guidelines on the use of such apps, but is currently working on how to assess them, says John Torous, MD, a psychiatrist with Brigham and Women’s and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and chair of the APA’s Smartphone App Taskforce.
Early studies show there’s a role for these apps. For instance, Dr. Torous and fellow researchers reported in the January-March 2015 issue of the journal JMIR Mental Health that people with major depression who use apps are diligent about recording important information and that health assessment scores derived from entries may provide greater insights than scores of traditional doctor-administered questionnaires. “The way people report depression to a doctor in a clinic is different from the way they report it to a smartphone,” Torous says.
This difference can be helpful to your doctor or therapist if you share the data. For example, it can be difficult to recall specifics when your therapist asks you about your sleep quality or moods over the past weeks, but if you’ve tracked it all in real time, you can simply provide a printout or a visual from your smartphone app.
Different mental health apps can be beneficial for different reasons. Some focus onmindfulness, which is the practice of focusing on the present moment without judging it. A good app for managing depression should promote self-reflection, and mood-tracking apps can also be good for this, says David Bakker, an Australian researcher and doctoral student at Monash. Bakker was part of a team that reviewed research on mental health apps and made recommendations for helpful features in the March 2016 issue of JMIR Mental Health.
Torous emphasizes that using mental health apps can be most helpful if you and your doctor or therapist set goals together. He also says to pay attention to the fine print: Take time to research the app’s product description page to find out if the app is based on clinical evidence and what level of privacy your information will have. If you’re unsure if an app would be good for you to use, ask your doctor or therapist at your next appointment.
8 Depression App Options
All of the following psychiatrist- and patient-approved apps are available for both iOS and Android smartphones:
AmWell: “Telehealth is promising,” Torous says — in many locales, telehealth consultations are covered by health insurance in a way that’s similar to coverage for office visits. This free app gives you in-person access to medical professionals for questions related to depression, among other conditions. Before booking an appointment on this or any other telehealth app, check with your health insurance to find out if you have telehealth coverage.
CBT-i Coach: Sleep changes can be a significant part of living with depression, Torous points out. This free app takes a cognitive behavioral therapy-based approach to managing insomnia. CBT-i Coach teaches users how their sleep-related behaviors and thoughts may be affecting their sleep. It’s among a suite of apps vetted by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to recommend to military service members, veterans, and families as well as the public.
Headspace: According to the American Psychological Association, practicing mindfulness can help prevent a depression relapse. The Headspace app offers tools to help with meditation and mindfulness. There’s a free version as well as subscription packages ranging from $6 to $12 a month for access to the entire meditation toolkit.
Mindfulness Coach: This app focuses on developing mindfulness to manage stress. Mindfulness Coach is another free app available through the VA. Although developed for veterans and service members, the app is available to the general public as well.
MoodKit: This app enables you to journal and track your moods daily and provides tools for improving your mood and managing your thoughts. It costs $4.99.
MoodPrism: This free app gives feedback on your daily mood entries and turns the information into reports on your emotional health. MoodPrism was developed with the support of Australian mental health organizations and Monash University.
Pacifica: Based on cognitive behavioral therapy, this free app lets you track your mood, thoughts, daily goals, and activity levels. Toronto resident and mental health advocate Alicia Raimundo uses it to keep track of her mood and daily activities. Raimundo, now 26, has lived with depression since she was 12. To get the most out of Pacifica, “You need to have a plan for what you’re going to do with the information,” she says. That way, if you realize you’ve been marking down that you’re sad for days at a time, you know that you’ll share it with your doctor, therapist, or support group.
PTSD Coach: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a condition that can go hand in hand with depression, according to the National Institute for Mental Health. PTSD Coach is another free app available through the VA. It was developed for people who have or might have PTSD. The app provides tools for managing symptoms of PTSD as well as resources for support.
Which Depression App Should You Download?
Until research provides more insight into which smartphone apps work best for managing depression, work with your doctor or therapist to determine the types of entries that will best help with your depression treatment plan, and then look for an app with those specific features. Remember that a mental health app isn’t meant to substitute for actual depression treatment, but it may be a good complement to traditional medical treatment for major depression.
Researchers find people with psychiatric conditions live an average of 10 fewer years.
People with mental health conditions such as depression, chronic anxiety and schizophrenia tend to die at younger ages than their peers without psychiatric disorders, a new research review says.
In fact, the researchers estimated that mental health disorders typically rob people of nearly a decade of life, and account for 8 million deaths worldwide each year.
The findings, published online Feb. 11 in JAMA Psychiatry, come from an analysis of over 200 international studies spanning several decades. Researchers said the studies help put the global toll of mental health disorders into perspective.
Although the study found an association between mental health conditions and earlier death, it wasn’t designed to prove that the disorders were a direct cause of the early deaths.
When people think of lives lost to mental illness, they might automatically focus on one cause of death — namely, suicide, said Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.
“But studies like this broaden our perspective,” said Olfson, who was not involved in the research. “The risk includes deaths from natural causes, and we see higher mortality across a range of mental health disorders.”
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Schizophrenia and other types of psychoses — among the most severe forms of mental illness — carried the highest mortality rates across the studies. But, Olfson noted, conditions such as major depression and anxiety disorders are far more common, and they also appeared to shorten people’s lives.
Overall, the analysis found, people with mental health conditions were more than twice as likely to die over roughly 10 years, versus people without the disorders.
Their risk of death from “unnatural causes” — including suicide and accidents — was seven times higher. But their odds of dying from physical health conditions were also elevated, by an average of 80 percent, according to the study.
“People with mental health disorders have a high prevalence of chronic medical conditions,” said study leader Elizabeth Walker, a researcher at the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta.
Making matters worse, she said, they often have difficulty managing those conditions — whether because of poor diet, lack of exercise, trouble sticking with medications, or problems getting the health care they need.
Olfson agreed, noting that physical health issues like obesity and type 2 diabetes — common among Americans, in general — are particularly common among people with psychiatric disorders. And both raise the risk of heart disease and other ills.
“We’ve known for some time that depression, for example, interferes with people’s adherence to treatment for chronic health conditions like diabetes,” Olfson said.
Yet the situation does not seem to be improving: Walker’s team found that the mortality “gap” between people with and without mental disorders has grown over time — becoming wider in studies done since the 1990s, versus those done prior to 1970.
Part of that could be due to healthier lifestyle habits in the general population, according to Olfson. Smoking, for example, has declined overall, but is still prevalent among people with mental health conditions, he noted.
Whatever the specific reasons, Walker said it appears that people with psychiatric conditions are not seeing the same physical health improvements as the overall population.
“There’s no simple solution to this,” she said. “It’s going to take multiple approaches.”
One approach is to make sure that people with psychiatric disorders have access to all the types of health care they need, according to Walker. She noted that Americans with mental health issues also have higher-than-average rates of poverty and unemployment, and may also lack the “social support” — family and friends — that can help them deal with chronic ills.
Both Walker and Olfson also pointed to the need for more “integrated care” — which essentially means better coordination among the different professionals responsible for a patient’s mental and physical health.
As for families of people with mental disorders, Olfson said they should be aware of the potential physical toll — and do what they can to support a healthy lifestyle.
When my husband’s child psychiatry office received the spring 2010 issue of the Advocate (a magazine put out by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI), I was interested to see that the front cover featured actress Glenn Close and her sister, Jessie. They’re each wearing white T-shirts – Glenn’s says “sister” and Jessie’s says “bipolar.”
I read the story inside, and learned that Glenn Close collaborated on the start-up of a non-profit organization that aims to decrease the stigma associated with mental illness and its treatment. Called “Bring Change 2 Mind,” the impetus for Close’s involvement was her intimate awareness of the unique challenges facing people with mental illness – awareness sharpened by the fact that her sister lives with bipolar disorder, and her sister’s son (Close’s nephew) has schizophrenia.
I was intrigued by the story in the magazine, and went immediately to the organization’s Web site, where I watched a public service announcement filmed in Grand Central Station by well-known director Ron Howard (also of Opie fame). It’s a moving and powerful piece, in which Glenn Close and several of her family members appear, along with maybe a hundred or so other volunteers. Pairs or groups of people are shown, strolling through crowds in the iconic train station, wearing T-shirts with simple lettering proclaiming their diagnosis (“bipolar,” “schizophrenic,” “post-traumatic stress disorder“) or their relationship to someone living with mental illness (“sister,” “mother,” “friend,” “battle buddy”). With the exception of Glenn Close, these aren’t actors – they’re real people living with mental illness – either their own, or their loved ones’.
Bring Change 2 Mind wants to call our attention to the fact that at least one out of every six adults and one out of every ten children are living with mental illness. As Close’s sister states: “And we face a stigma that can be as painful as the disease itself.”
So not only do people with mental illness suffer from the effects of their disease – a disease that affects their brain, their mind, the center of their personality and identity, the pathway to perceiving the world around them and relating to the people in their lives – they also suffer from our society’s image of mental illness. That image casts people with these conditions as dangerous, untrustworthy, scary, weird, unpredictable, threatening. And the stigma associated with mental illness can prevent people from reaching out to get help for themselves.
Go on Bringchange2mind.org to watch the public service announcement, and to watch other short interviews with people living with mental illness and the people who love and support them. Bring Change 2 Mind wants us all to educate ourselves about mental illness, to separate fact from fiction, science from myth; to seek help or reach out to those who need help; to monitor our words, our attitudes, and our actions in order to avoid further entrenching mental illness in the mire of stigma.
As Glenn Close says at the end of the PSA: “Change a mind about mental illness, and you can change a life.”
To find help for yourself or a loved one, to get good information about mental illness, or to learn how to help, go to Bringchange2mind.org, or look through their excellent Web page on othermental health resources.
Bipolar Support Groups.com blog 