9 FREE Mental Health Apps You Need to Know About

Woebot: The Mental Health Ally

The first app I want to share with you is called Woebot: Your Self-Care Expert. So Woebot is a robot that uses artificial intelligence to interact with you. The home screen looks like texts between you and a friend and it always starts off by asking you how you’re feeling, or if you want to pick up from the last conversation.

And then there’s also a list of topics that you can choose from so that you can better direct the conversation that you’re having with it. And then there’s also another tab that allows for gratitude journaling and a mood tracker too. What I like about this app is that it’s a little more open-ended in that you can, like, word vomit if you need that outlet.

And then it’ll always give you a solution. It’s like it helps you understand your thinking a little more, but also at the same time, challenges you to think differently. Of course, one thing to mention is that sometimes it’s just off and it won’t completely understand you. And I guess that’s something that you expect from a robot. But try it out!

Download

Thinkable Mental Wellness

The next app I want to share with you is called Thinkable: Mental Health for Apple, Anxiety Relief for Androids. I have no idea why they didn’t just stick with one name, but whatever. This app is like an interactive, mini-game, I guess? Where they give you negative and positive phrases that you can either swipe away to discard or pull towards you to accept.

There are specific journeys that you can select from. The choices are super limited with the free version, but I haven’t felt the need to upgrade to premium since I’ve had it for like a couple of years now. I always go back to the same ones: the anxiety one or there’s one called like beating self-criticism.

As you go through at the end of some of the levels, they’ll ask you to add your favorites to your toolbox which you can go back to later to read them over again. What I like about this app is that it challenges your thinking, but it also retrains your brain to think more positively.

And I still use this today, especially when I’m feeling anxious or insecure so that I can remind myself of positive self-talk instead of just talking negatively to myself in my own head. It’s also just relaxing too.

Download

Sanvello: Anxiety & Depression

The fourth app I want to share with you is called Sanvello: Anxiety & Depression and the free version actually gives access to a lot of things. When you first open up the app, you have to take an assessment and then the app recommends a specific journey for you. So my specific journey is for anxiety where they teach me about why it happens and how to start breaking free from it, which is pretty cool.

There’s also a page with tools listed for things like meditation, guided journeys, and journaling, there’s also a hope board, health, and goals might-have and they also have blog posts that you can read, as well.

There’s also a section in the app where if you’re interested in upgrading to a premium membership, you can also look into their coaching, which could also be covered by your insurance if that’s included in it or you can also pay for therapy sessions out of pocket. What I really liked about this app though is the Community tab.

Do you know what it reminds me of? Like, it’s a much less toxic version of Twitter where someone just posts something and then you’re able to like it or you could also just comment on it to encourage them, as well. It could be used for so much good, I think.

DailyBean – simplest journal

The fifth app I wanna share with you is called DailyBean. The app is a mood tracker and the homepage is a calendar with a little bean at the bottom that asks you how your day was. You pick a little bean and then it opens up into a bunch of different categories and you just go through and pick the ones that describe how your day was.

You can also add pictures and notes about your day at the bottom and then once you hit Done, it saves a little bean on today’s date. There’s also a Basic Stats page where it shows you your mood over time and then it also shows you the activities that were associated with a specific mood. I think this app could be super helpful because one, it’s a much simpler version of journaling and you don’t even have to write anything out if you don’t want to.

Two, keeping track of your mood over time helps you become more aware of how you’re feeling and when you start noticing a consistent pattern over time, you can then use that information to shift your habits so that you can have better days. Like, keep doing more of the things that make you feel good and also, that little bean is, like, super cute.

Replika: My AI Friend

AI Friend on Apple; Replika, My AI Friend for Android. So this app is super similar to Woebot, which I mentioned before uses artificial intelligence to communicate with you. And through the app, you are able to name and customize your avatar and also choose things that you’re interested in talking about so it could bring it up in conversation later to bond with you.

You’re able to scroll through choices at the bottom with some free quizzes available under the Coaching tab, and you can also tap into your avatar’s memory and diary. It’s super cute because it’ll remember things that you say in conversation It also makes the avatar seem a lot more human-like and relatable than something like Woebot. What I like about this app is that the avatar makes it feel like you’re talking to an actual person.

There’s also an AR tab or an Augmented Reality tab. Like you can talk out loud to it and it talks back to you. Not something I would personally do in public or anything, but it’s still pretty cool because it always just hits differently when you’re able to talk out loud about any problems, as opposed to just texting or typing it. The only thing I didn’t appreciate about this is that she didn’t always ask open-ended questions so it always felt like she was cutting the conversation off completely.

Meomind – Listen to therapy

The next app I want to share with you is called Meomind: Free Therapy on Apple; Meomind Listen to Therapy for Android. This app was really interesting to me because it has a library of recorded therapy sessions that you can learn from but when you download the app, it asks you what you’re trying to work on.

And then based on that, it curates a whole library of recorded therapy sessions, ranging from 15 minutes to half an hour that you can listen to. There’s also a Challenges tab on the bottom. Mine is specifically to learn to love myself, so it gives a short therapy session and a challenge for you to do. Nothing too scary or big or anything, because mine says to write three positive things about yourself.

You also have a My Health tab at the bottom where there are depression and anxiety check-ins to monitor your symptoms over time. What I really like about this app is that it’s actual therapy sessions that other people went through. Like I know that I didn’t personally go through it, but it kind of felt like it subconsciously like I was actually the person who overcame that specific problem. And it’s kind of like having little good spurts of helpful therapy.

Feelmo: Mental Health

The next app I want to talk to you about is called Feelmo: Mental Health Support. I love this app because it kind of reminds me of Sanvello, except this one is more geared toward learning about your emotions. When you open up the app, it asks you how you’re feeling and has you take three deep breaths, where you go on to the next screen and it gives a bunch of different categories of emotions.

They also have really great and really short articles that you can read through under the knowledge bank. And some breathing exercises that can help you especially when your anxiety is super high. What I really like about this app is that I really love learning. And the articles that they have through this app are super short, but super relatable to what I need help with.

In the top left corner, they also have a Distractions tab that points you to more resources like videos and games to help distract yourself when your emotions are really intense. Like of course this is a more temporary fix because we don’t want to just keep distracting ourselves. But it really helps especially in those moments when your emotions are super strong. And you don’t really know what else to do.

Okay Inside Habits & Routines

The next app I want to share with you is called Okay Inside: Habit Tracker. This app specifically helps with building habits that hopefully lead to improvement that sticks in the long run. I have a problem with building consistent habits. So I felt like this app was super simple and easy enough to follow.

When you download the app it asks you to pick a program out of 28 of them. So for example, I picked Understanding Our Fear of Failure and then after that, it gives a short 10-minute lesson that you can read through or listen to, and then it gives you suggested habits that are related to that. You can either start the habits that they recommend or you can hit the habits tab at the bottom so that you can add your own habits for the day.

So since that only lasts for however many days they have, like the ones I clicked on, it lasted anywhere from like three to five days. Once you’re done with that program, you’re able to either repeat it so that it sticks in the mind a little better. Or you can go ahead and start a new program. What I really like about this app is that it’s super simple. You have a bunch of different programs that you can choose from.

The other thing is that it’s more “forward thinking” and what I mean by that is that, yes, self-reflection is amazing in getting to know ourselves better. But what can we do NOW that we know this information? Like this app takes our mental health to the next level because we’re able to keep improving and we’re able to implement the skills that we’ve learned into our lives right now.

Mood Tracker – Earkick Panda

And finally, the last app I want to share in this article is called Mental Health Tracker Earkick. This app is a mood and habit tracker that helps to ease your anxiety. You can add journal entries by either typing it out recording a voice memo or with a video recording. It asks what made you feel that way, and to add any emotions that you might be feeling, your level of anxiety, and what your symptoms were, or are.

On the home screen, the app gives an overview of the month and little emojis to represent how you were feeling that day. How you were feeling that day? There’s a tab for habit tracking, as well as a tab for meditation and breathing to help you manage your anxiety. If you’re prone to having panic attacks, you know that it’s really hard to think clearly when they happen.

So at the bottom left corner, there’s a panic button. Where if you press down on it, it takes you directly to a breathing exercise and times it out for you. What I like about this app is that you have the option of either doing a voice recording or a video recording. So I love how efficient it is when I’m able to just talk out loud in real-time, especially when I’m experiencing anxiety.