Struggling with anxiety? Tired of missing out? There are things you can do to stop anxiety and fear from controlling your life. MindShift is an app designed to help teens and young adults cope with anxiety. It can help you change how you think about anxiety. Rather than trying to avoid anxiety, you can make an important shift and face it.
Apps
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We are excited to share a list of Apple and Android Apps you may enjoy or find useful.
The University of North Florida (UNF) Counseling Center endorses the Safe Ospreys App only, as it is the only app listed below that was developed and is maintained by UNF.
Most of these apps are free, however, some are available for a fee and/or offer In-App purchases. For more information or to download these apps, click the links below. We encourage you to consider the following guidelines in order to make an informed decision about which apps to try:
- Look for and review app's the privacy policy
- Seek and review any evidence or research that supports the app
- Look for and read any independent reviews of the app
- Consider how easy it is to use
- Keep in mind an app should not replace professional care
Anxiety Reduction, Stress Management, & Coping
MindShift
PTSD Coach
PTSD Coach was designed for those who have, or may have, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This app provides you with education about PTSD, information about professional care, a self-assessment for PTSD, opportunities to find support, and tools that can help you manage the stresses of daily life with PTSD. Tools range from relaxation skills and positive self-talk to anger management and other common self-help strategies. You can customize tools based on your preferences and can integrate your own contacts, photos, and music. This app can be used by people who are in treatment as well as those who are not.
Tactical Breather
Tactical Breathing Trainer can be used to gain control over physiological and Psychological responses to stress. Through repetitive practice and training, anyone can learn to gain control of your heart rate, emotions, concentration, and other physiological and Psychological responses to your body during stressful situations.
Breathe2Relax
Breathe2Relax is a portable stress management tool which provides detailed information on the effects of stress on the body and instructions and practice exercises to help users learn the stress management skill called diaphragmatic breathing.Breathing exercises have been documented to decrease the body's 'fight-or-flight' (stress) response, and help with mood stabilization, anger control, and anxiety management. Breathe2Relax can be used as a stand-alone stress reduction tool, or can be used in tandem with clinical care directed by a healthcare worker. Breathe2Relax now uses HealthKit and your Apple Watch device to measure your heart rate throughout your breathing exercise to help provide an even more complete picture of the relaxation experienced.
Grief: Support for Young People
The app has information about bereavement, grief, feelings and how to help yourself. You can also read others' stories and watch short films written and made by bereaved young people. It is for 11-25 year olds who have been bereaved of someone important to them. It can also be used by friends, teachers, parents and professionals who would like to know how to support bereaved young people.
Bias Modification
Bias Modification is a app/game that is based on the research in Cognitive bias modification (CBM). CBM has been shown to help overcome the tendency to focus on negative or threatening social cues. CBM does this by making you repeatedly select positive over negative information.
Pacifica for Stress & Anxiety
Stress, anxiety, and depression can get in the way of you living your life. Pacifica gives you psychologist-designed tools to address them based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, mindfulness meditation, relaxation, and mood/health tracking.
SuperBetter
SuperBetter increases resilience - the ability to stay strong, motivated and optimistic even in the face of difficult obstacles. Playing SuperBetter makes you more capable of getting through any tough situation-and more likely to achieve the goals that matter most to you.
Booster Buddy
BoosterBuddy is a free app designed to help teens and young adults improve their mental health. Manage your personal wellness journey and earn achievements as your sidekick guides you through a series of daily quests designed to establish and sustain positive habits.
End Anxiety Hypnosis - Stress, Panic Attack Help
This anxiety help app is designed to show you how to reduce anxiety and to learn anxiety management techniques.
Happify: for Stress & Worry
Happify's science-based activities and games can help reduce stress, overcome negative thoughts, and build greater resilience by providing effective tools and programs to improve emotional well-being.
What's Up? - A Mental Health App
What's Up? is a fantastic free app utilizing some of the best CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy) methods to help you cope with Depression, Anxiety, Anger, Stress and more! With a beautiful, modern design, simple heading and easy-to-follow methods, you can get to what helps you the most in seconds!
Self-help for Anxiety Management
Self-help for Anxiety Management (SAM) is a friendly app that offers a range of self-help methods for people who are serious about learning to manage their anxiety. SAM has been developed by a university team of psychologists, computer scientists and student users. Established methods of self-help have been combined with high standards of usability to provide an engaging, flexible, and practical resource.
MoodTools - Depression Aid
If you are feeling sad, anxious, or depressed, lift your mood with MoodTools! MoodTools is designed to help you combat depression and alleviate your negative moods, aiding you on your road to recovery. MoodTools contains several different research-supported tools.
nOCD: Effective care for OCD
The nOCD app allows you to continue treatment throughout the week and eliminates many of the barriers to successful treatment. No more carrying paper and pen around, or forgetting therapy because you're busy. If you're looking for an easier way to feel better, try nOCD. nOCD, Inc. is not a treatment company, and the nOCD app is not intended as a standalone treatment. Although this app is developed with clinicians to closely resemble established treatment protocols, it is intended to be used in conjunction with a therapist or another medical provider.
Diary, Journal, and Recovery
Gratitude Journal 365 - Diary For Your Happiness
Use a gratitude journal to restart your life by appreciating what you have in life. Keeping a gratitude journal can become a positive habit, but only with discipline. With continued exercise, practicing gratitude will create more abundance, prosperity, well-being, and happiness than you ever thought possible.
Happier
Happier helps you stay more present and positive throughout the day. Our Apple Watch app is like your personal mindfulness coach -- use it to lift your mood, take a quick meditation pause, or capture and savor the small happy moments that you find in your day.
Attitudes of Gratitude Journal
This simple app will help you to develop and maintain a daily attitude of gratitude. At the end of each day you can list the things you are grateful for. You will soon see that your list is much longer than you expected.
CBT-i Coach
CBT-i Coach is for people who are engaged in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia with a health provider, or who have experienced symptoms of insomnia and would like to improve their sleep habits. The app will guide you through the process of learning about sleep, developing positive sleep routines, and improving your sleep environment. It provides a structured program that teaches strategies proven to improve sleep and help alleviate symptoms of insomnia. CBT-i Coach is intended to augment face-to-face care with a healthcare professional. It can be used on its own, but it is not intended to replace therapy for those who need it.
CBT Thought Diary
Thought Diary will help you evaluate, understand, and change your thoughts and feelings. By using this application, you can work to identify your emotions, analyze how and why you're feeling this way, challenge those negative beliefs, change your thinking patterns for future situations, and remember positive experiences. You can use this app as a mood journal, a thought record journal, and a gratitude journal.
RR: Eating Disorder Management
Recovery Record is the smart companion for managing your journey to recovery from eating disorders including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder. This app is also intended for people with general eating, weight and shape concerns. Use for self-help or link with your treatment team's Recovery Record Clinician App to stay connected, co-manage recovery and achieve your goals.
Rise Up + Recover: An Eating Disorder Monitoring and Management Tool for Anorexia, Bulimia, Binge Eating, and EDNOS
Rise Up + Recover is just the app for you if you are struggling with food, dieting, exercise and body image. Based off self-monitoring homework, a cornerstone of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), we designed a convenient and user-friendly app that has been used millions of time around the world. Rise Up + Recover is the perfect addition to your professional treatment for an eating disorder including anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), obsessive eating disorder (OED), binge eating disorder (BED) and compulsive eating disorder (CED).
Meditation and Mindfulness
Take a Break! - Meditations for Stress Relief
Take a break now and let your stress melt away! You can enjoy the deep relaxation, stress relief and benefits of meditation now with this app by Meditation Oasis™. Featuring two popular meditations from the the Meditation Oasis podcast, the app gives you the option to listen with or without music or nature sounds. You can also listen to the relaxing music and nature sounds alone.
Headspace: Meditation
Headspace is the simple way to reframe stress. Relax with guided meditations and mindfulness techniques that bring calm, wellness and balance to your life in just a few minutes a day. Plus, we have meditations on sleep to help you create the ideal conditions for a good night's rest.
Lotus Bud Mindfulness Bell
Propel your mindfulness practice from the cushion into the world. Modeled after a practice in Buddhist monasteries, Mindfulness Bells are a powerful practice to remind you of your intention to be mindful. Activate the Mindfulness Bell and it sends you gentle reminders randomly throughout the day.
Remindful - Be Present.
Remindful is a reminder app that rings at customized intervals throughout the day, to gently prompt you to come back to the present moment and to help guide you to become more mindful.
Smiling Mind
Smiling Mind is a FREE mindfulness meditation app developed by psychologists and educators to help bring balance to your life. Just as we eat well and stay fit to keep our body healthy, mindfulness meditation is about mental health and looking after the mind. Our programs are designed to assist people in dealing with the pressure, stress, and challenges of daily life.
Stop, Breathe & Think
Stop, Breathe & Think, the app for meditation & mindfulness, has a unique approach that allows you to check in with your emotions, and then recommends short, guided meditations, yoga and acupressure videos, tuned to how you feel.
Insight Timer - Meditation App
Join millions learning to meditate on Insight Timer to help calm the mind, reduce anxiety, manage stress, sleep deeply and improve happiness. Guided meditations and talks led by the world's top mindfulness experts, neuroscientists, psychologists and meditation teachers from Stanford, Harvard, Dartmouth and the University of Oxford. Music tracks from world-renowned artists.
Calm
Join the millions experiencing lower stress, less anxiety, and more restful sleep with our guided meditations, Sleep Stories, breathing programs, masterclasses, and relaxing music. Recommended by top psychologists, therapists, and mental health experts. Calm is the perfect mindfulness app for beginners, but also includes hundreds of programs for intermediate and advanced users.
HelloMind: Meditation|Hypnosis
HelloMind helps you take back control of your life. Through guided meditation, HelloMind gives you tools to overcome bad lifestyle patterns and work through negative thoughts.
Mood Tracking
Daylio - Diary, Journal, Mood Tracker
Daylio enables you to keep a private diary without having to type a single line. Try this beautifully designed micro-diary app right now for FREE! Pick your mood and add activities you have been doing during the day. You can also add notes and keep an old school diary. Daylio is collecting recorded moods and activities in the statistics and calendar. This format will help you to understand your habits better. Keep track of your activities and create patterns to become more productive!
T2 Mood Tracker
Mood Tracker allows users to monitor their moods on six pre-loaded scales (anxiety, stress, depression, brain injury, post-traumatic stress, general well-being). Custom scales can also be built. Users rate their moods by swiping a small bar to the left or to the right. The ratings are displayed on graphs to help users track their moods over time. Notes can be recorded to document daily events, medication changes and treatments that may be associated with mood changes, providing accurate information to help health care providers make treatment decisions.
Moody - Daily Mood Tracker
How were you feeling last week? What was your mood last September? It's usually hard to remember your mood, but Moody is here to help you. Whether you are recovering from a depression, suffer from bipolar disorder or just want to be aware and improve your mood, Moody helps you keep track of your day to day mood and write notes to keep a mood journal of your life.
Moodpath: Depression & Anxiety
Moodpath is an interactive mental health screening and improvement program that detects symptoms of depression. After answering questions concerning your emotional and physical well-being you receive a professional assessment of your mental health that you can share and discuss with your physician or therapist. Moodpath is a CE-certified medical product and does not collect any personal data.
Stigma: Mood Tracker & Journal
Stigma provides you a safe way to build your support network, journal what's on your mind, and keep track of your mood.
Sleep & Rest
SleepStream 2
SleepStream 2 is an advanced sleep inducer and relaxation aid. It helps you leave your busy day behind with a rich selection of calming sounds, soothing melodies, effective brainwave programs, and beautiful visualizations.
Relax & Sleep Well Hypnosis
Relax & Sleep Well is a professional hypnosis and meditation app by Glenn Harrold, an acclaimed hypnotherapist of over 20 years. The app features 4 free hypnotherapy and meditation recordings and over 80 in-app purchase options covering insomnia, stress, anxiety, mindfulness, sleep, weight-loss, confidence, self-esteem, the solfeggio frequencies, binaural beats, spiritual healing, phobias, addictions and much more. All recordings are high quality pro studio productions.
Specific Apps for Students of Color
Exhale
Exhale is an app focused on the emotional well-being of Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color created by women of color. The app offers several categories of resources including meditations, guided imagery, breath work, affirmations, and coach talks. Within each category, save for the Affirm section, there are at least four recorded meditations. The meditation sessions focus on topics of microaggression, stress, soul medicine, and others. Daily notifications such as reminders for self-care and affirmation statements are sent through the app.
Liberate
Liberate is a meditation app designed for the Black community. The app provides meditation practices and recorded talks that are created by persons of color. The content is organized into 18 categories that cover topics such as anxiety, anger, mindfulness, depression, and sleep. Additionally, the app includes topics that speak to identity and experiences of racism such as race, pride, masculinity, and microaggressions. For example, within the pride category, the meditations/talks titles are “Queer Pride & Love” and “Transgender Solidarity” and within the race category, meditations/talks include “Healing from Racial Trauma” and “Racism Through a Buddhist Lens.” Liberate also offers a community aspect where users can comment on the meditation. Users can interact with each other by liking a comment.
Shine
Shine is a mental health wellness app focusing on managing stress and anxiety through meditations, self-care, and community support. Shine was built with inclusion and diversity at the forefront so that those from traditionally marginalized groups have an app where they can see themselves reflected in the content, and the voices of those creating and providing the content. There are mental health playlists specifically for a variety of groups including Latinx, Black, AAPI+, and LGBTQ+.
Personal Safety & Suicide Prevention
Circle of 6
Circle of 6 is a personal safety app for everyone. Circle of 6 lets you choose up to 6 trusted friends to add to your circle. If you get into an uncomfortable or risky situation, use Circle of 6 to automatically send your circle a pre-programmed SMS alert message, with your exact location. It's quick. It's discreet. Two taps is all it takes. Circle of 6 also connects you to 24h hotlines for safety and information, as well as Scarleteen.com, a comprehensive online sexual health resource.
Safe Ospreys
Safe Ospreys is the official safety app of University of North Florida. It is the only app that integrates with UNF's safety and security systems. UNF Police Department has worked to develop a unique app that provides students, faculty and staff with added safety on the UNF campus. The app will send you important safety alerts and provide instant access to campus safety resources.
Suicide Safety Plan
This app is designed to support those dealing with suicidal thoughts and help prevent suicide. Having a safety plan in place that can help guide you through difficult moments can help you cope and keep you safe. A safety plan is designed so that you can start at the beginning and continue through the steps. You can customize your own warning signs that a crisis may be developing, coping strategies for dealing with suicidal urges, places for distraction, friends and family members you can reach out to, professionals you can call, methods of making your environment safe, and your own important reasons for living.
MY3 - Support Network
Stay connected to your network when you are in a time of crisis with MY3. With MY3, you define your network, and your plan to stay safe. With MY3 you can be prepared to help yourself and reach out to others when you are feeling suicidal. Remember, there is hope and a life to look forward to even in your darkest moments - this app can help you get through the difficult moments.