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Chris Foy is a SEO manager at FHE Health and has worked in the behavioral health industry for over 10 years. He is also a tech enthusiast and wrote this article after researching and personally testing out some of the most popular mental health apps.
If you’ve ever listened to a podcast, you’ve probably been pitched a mental health app. Its promises of less anxiety, better mental health, or a therapist who can help you weather the storms of life may sound tempting, but how helpful are these apps? Are there any catches, or is an improvement in my mental health really a tap away? We decided to find out, by giving the most popular apps available on iOS and Google Play a test run.
The Importance of Mental Health Apps
Culturally, we are more aware than ever of the importance of mental health and have made great strides in destigmatizing the need for mental health care. When 1 in 5 Americans has a diagnosable mental health condition every year, the need for mental health care is great.
At the same time, though, too many Americans go without treatment, even with the health insurance to afford it. As illustration, in 2022, 92 percent of Americans had health insurance at some point in the year, yet many did not seek care for a variety of reasons. Some of the top reasons that people don’t get treatment, according to a 2016 study in the UK, include:
- “Feeling embarassed or ashamed” (81%)
- “Concern about what my family might think, say, do or feel” (75.7%)
- “Not wanting a mental health problem to be on my medical records” (71.1%)
- And, overwhelmingly, “Wanting to solve the problem on my own” (85.3%)
It’s no wonder that mental health apps are a desirable solution. They offer privacy, free results, and more of the “do-it-yourself” approach.
Types of Mental Health Apps
There are a number of mental health apps, but each has a different aim. Some are vehicles for teletherapy companies, others offer tracking of progress, and still others help guide the user through wellness strategies. This variation makes it impossible to declare one mental health app “the best,” but from a look at the most popular non-teletherapy apps, both in terms of their ranking and downloads, here are some insights into what you might expect from them….
Top Mental Health Apps
Calm – Sleep, Meditation, Relaxation
Calm’s main focus is improving users’ sleep, but its other benefits, according to its website, include stress relief and greater resilience for life’s ups and downs. The app markets widely on social media and on podcasts, where it claims to be the #1 app for meditation and sleep.
The Calm app itself is free and can be used in a free trial; however, to continue using the service requires a premium subscription at a cost of $70/yr, depending on promotions. The core of their app is a database of “sleep stories,” as well as guided meditations. The sleep stories are calming stories, read by talented voice-over artists, that can be listened to as you unwind to help you fall asleep. The guided meditations can be used as needed, in either moments of high anxiety or routinely in your day. Other services are included in the app, including “soundscapes,” which purport to use frequencies that may help regulate anxiety and even improve focus. As the app states, the evidence is not yet conclusive as to the effects of this service.
With over 250 sleep stories and hours of guided meditation, there is little risk of running out of content to use on this app. If you have found you fall asleep easier with audiobooks or meditation videos, this app may be a great answer to troubles falling or staying asleep.
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While the presentation of the service broadly is a nice offering, some might feel they can get similar meditation guides and audiobook readings from a free service such as YouTube. As someone who has tried such methods before, I’ve found the issue there is often the ads that YouTube injects. There’s nothing quite like listening to a guided meditation that is suddenly interrupted by a deafening ad for a cruise line spliced in.
Type of Service: Meditation/Calming App
Pros: A free trial to test the service. Excellent quality audio content.
Cons: $70 subscription, that you might feel is offered free elsewhere.
Finch: A Self-Care Pet
Finch was launched in 2021 with a mission to make self-care fun and accessible. The app was started by two friends. Their own struggles with anxiety and depression inspired them to create an app that encourages users to be more kind to themselves and track their self-care, by caring for a little bird (a finch). The idea is that when users see how their actions positively and tangibly impact another creature, they’ll be more motivated to exercise self-compassion. Users can also interact with the app through quizzes and are prompted to do self-care in real life, such as “washing your face” and encouraging you to complete goals.
The experience feels a bit like taking care of a tamagatchi (though, your finch can’t die, so without that unneeded stress). For those familiar with cozy games, such as Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing, you will notice some key touchstones including unlocking outfits and special timed events. The pet does go through growing phases to become an adult and has a social aspect where you can send “good vibes” to your friends that are in your “tree town.”
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“Finch Plus” is a premium version of the app that unlocks all of the wellness exercises, as well as more in-game rewards. This is mostly content that users will experience by logging into the app regularly but is aimed to improve the experience if users want to support the developers.
Type of Service: Game/Wellness Tracker
Pros: Approach of gamifying self-care may be appealing to some. You can access most of the app without cost. The social connection aspect of the app is great for friends.
Cons: Approach of gamifying self-care may not be for everyone! It does have a limited amount of content each day. The intent is to check in regularly to care for the pet (yourself!)
Headspace: Meditation and Sleep
Headspace is another widely advertised mental health app. They advertise extensively on social media with a focus on TikTok. Their distinctive art style and incorporation of meditation guides into their ads create a welcoming, non-salesy approach to their platform. The company started as an event in London in 2010, before launching the first version of the app in 2012. The company even signed a three series deal with Netflix produced by Vox Media, releasing their three series, “Headspace Guide to Meditation,” “Headspace Gude to Sleep,” and “Unwind Your Mind,” all released in 2021.
Headspace focuses on teaching meditation, improving sleep, and mostly improving “mindfulness.” The app offers multiple services. Its primary function has long been to provide “courses” in guided meditation. Each course contains sections designated by gamified checkboxes that in turn track what percentage of the course a user may have completed and their mastery of the material.
With a company merger in 2023, Headspace moved into the coaching and therapy space. The therapy service is offered through a companion app, “Headspace Care,” and it currently only appears open to certain partnerships, not the general public. Their “Mental Health Coaching” is an interesting new offering that offers text sessions with a “coach” several times a month. A coach is defined differently than a therapist, and the cost of this service is steep at $99/mo.
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The bulk of the Headspace experience is their course content, which aims to give users tools for handling stress, anxiety, grief and a wide range of mental health issues. The content is designed to be bright, calming, and peaceful, and does an excellent job at evoking the wellness and “good vibes” that you may have seen in their ads. Their service, like many others, offers a free trial of 14-days and an annual subscription of $69.99/yr.
Type of Service: Courses for Self-Help/Branching into Coaching and Therapy
Pros: Offers much of the auditory meditation content that other apps provide, as well as extensive libraries of content for learning mental health coping skills. Very well-designed and beautiful app.
Cons: Premium cost to access the content.
Daylio Journal
Daylio is a private journaling tool, promising beautiful design and an intuitive user experience to make mood tracking easy and fun. The app has been around since 2015, and rather than be in the business of teaching about mental health, it simply offers tools to track it. Users can make entries with details about how they are feeling, their daily activities, and diet and sleep. The app then extracts data from these journals that can be reviewed and analyzed for patterns and correlations.
Daylio offers a simple logging experience and returns interesting, easy-to-read reports on your health, including statistics that can be shared with friends or therapists. The service is free but has a premium mode that removes ads (on Android phones), as well as more icons, reminders, and backup services. If you feel like the barrier to better mental health is data, this might be a good app for you!
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Type of Service: Mental Health Journaling
Pros: Free functionality. Beautiful and simple app design. It does what it promises!
Cons: None
Which Mental Health App Is Right for You?
The best mental health app for you will really depend on your needs. Several trial services for apps offer large databases of content that is fun to work through, but they depend on your motivation to learn the tools you need. Many people find they benefit more from a therapist who can listen to their mental health struggles, guide their processing, and offer personalized tips and suggestions.
Some of these apps can be great tools for supporting mental health, such as the journaling assistance apps, but it’s also important to recognize the limitations of these apps. It is highly unlikely that any course on an app will cure someone of diagnosable depression. If you have found that a mental health app is not improving your wellbeing, or that you are having trouble solving a mental health issue on your own, it’s critical that you reach out for help.
