Mental Health Apps: Beneficial or Harmful?

Tanya J. Peterson

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Mental Health Apps: Beneficial or Harmful?

If you have a smart phone, you may be aware that there are apps for almost everything, including mental health and wellbeing. Are mental health apps beneficial, or are they a waste of time (or even harmful)?

Mental Health Apps Can Help

If a mental health app is based on scientific research, it has the potential to do some good and help you overcome difficulties like stress, anxiety, and depressive thinking. Research-based apps often use one or more proven approaches to mental health like mindfulness, meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, and positive psychology. They offer interactive ways to help you recognize and overcome negative thoughts that keep you stuck, center your emotions, and choose positive actions in your life. (Each app is unique and targets different challenges with its own activities).

When used regularly and sometimes in conjunction with mental health therapy, these apps can help you improve your perspective and give you tools to calm yourself in the face of emotional or situational upheaval. That said, even good mental health apps have their limitations.

When Mental Health Apps Might Harm

Apps aren’t substitutes for professional mental health care, and they can’t assist people in crisis. They also aren’t great for people dealing with severe mental illness (including depression and anxiety, which many of these apps are designed to help).

Used wisely, mental health apps can be great tools. If you do use them, though, make them part of other treatments rather than as stand-alone therapies.