Evaluating mental health apps

There are so many apps available that claim to help you learn meditation, do Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, deal with anxiety or depressive thoughts, et cetera ... but how do you know what to use?

That is a good question. But it does not have a quick or easy answer. Firstly, as therapists, we can't be familiar with all of them. Secondly, even if we have heard of them, we can't offer a professional opinion, or even a reasonably good personal opinion, because doing so would require some in-depth evaluation of the app and how you might want to use it.

The American Psychiatric Association helps address this by providing a framework, a large set of questions, really, that allows one to systematically evaluate an app in conjunction with your needs. You can read their approach here: https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/mental-health-apps/the-app-evaluation-model

If you read the information at that link, you'll see why asking your therapist about an app in session might not be very helpful, because a quick answer is not necessarily a good answer.

So, I'll offer you this: if you are an existing client, and you have an app in mind that you would like to use for mental health purposes, email us the name of the app and what you'd like to use it for, and we will look into it and book a session to evaluate the app with you. We do not recommend any apps, and we have no commercial relationship with any app maker or seller that would see us profit from recommending you any particular app. What we can do is walk through the APA questions with you and help you determine if you want to use the app or not.