Making Mindfulness Easier, a Mental Health App Review
To help Make Mindfulness Easier, our Clinical Team at Newport & Wildman has created a Mental Health App Review.
For the full App Review, click here.
Calm Mind – Recommended (any audience)
This app focuses on four major categories of wellbeing:
- Wake/Sleep 2.Relax 3.Meditate 4.Breathing
The app and some of its basic features are free, however, the user has to pay for additional content.
Headspace – Highly Recommended (younger audience)
The Headspace app is geared more towards a younger age cohort and integrates social media into the app. The app provides hundreds of guided meditations; which focus on several different topics with a new topic every day. The app also features sleep sounds; tutorial animations; a meditation progress tracker; and exercises that are designed for children. This is a highly recommended app for children and teenagers struggling with anxiety and/or depression.
Unwinding Anxiety – Highly Recommended (older audience)
Unwinding Anxiety is a mental wellness app that aims to help the user control their anxiety. The app features daily exercises that the user can complete across 30 different modules. The app uses evidence-based tools to help the individual if they are immediately experiencing stress or anxiety, cravings, strong emotions etc.
The free trial provides access to 4 video modules, behaviour change tools including a stress test and stress meter, daily mindfulness and guided meditations. The app has been created by a clinical research scientist, neurologist and psychiatrist – Justin Brewer. He is also a practitioner with over 30 years of mindfulness experience.
Headgear – Recommended (created by The Black Dog Institute)
This is an Australian created app which, from the outset, acknowledges that although the app has been proven to help wellbeing for those in a "working populations" it does not replace getting the right help and support from professionals. It is a mental fitness app that focuses on mental health. It features a mood tracker; a toolbox with breathing and thinking activities; and a 30-day challenge where the user completes daily mindfulness and behavioural exercises.
Daily Yoga – Recommended
Yoga is one of the few combined physical, mental and emotional tools which has consistently been proven over time (other than cardiovascular training) to increase mental health and wellbeing when practiced on a regular basis. The app is easy to use and provides 7 free short videos on basic yoga poses and breathing exercises.
