These four applications stand out as valuable tools for aiding students in managing their mental health. Similar to U-high provided app Insight Timer these apps cover stress reduction to meditation to tracking mood, they provide students with accessible ways to stay in touch with their own mental health.
Headspace
Headspace is a mindfulness and meditation application dedicated to supporting and uplifting one’s overall mental well-being. The app offers a user-friendly platform consisting of guided meditation videos, sleep inducing podcasts, also known as sleep-casts, and breathing exercises, making integrating mindfulness into everyday life achievable. The app targets a range of issues, from stress reduction to self awareness to improved sleeping. Headspace is a useful and beginner-friendly resource for students looking to alleviate anxiety, reduce stress or simply incorporate mindfulness in their day-to-day lives. While the full program has a $12.99 monthly fee, some activities don’t require a subscription.
Daylio Journal
Daylio Journal, an online journaling application, advertises itself as a “self-care bullet journal.” Users record their daily activities, moods and emotions as a way to externalize their stresses and gather their thoughts. The goal of the app is to simplify one’s reflection process, and it allows users to tailor the online journal to their specific needs. Over time, the journal begins to generate a user’s statistics to reveal patterns in emotional health, allowing the user to focus on causes of stress and anxiety and regulate them effectively. This app is particularly useful for users who want to gain a better understanding of their emotions, in addition to improving them, while tracking personal growth. Daylio Journal is free and also has a premium subscription option.
Forest
Forest is an app designed to motivate users to stay focused on their work through an appealing and fun premise. Similar to productivity app Flora, in this $3.99 app, the user plants a tree at the beginning of every work session, setting off a timer for a designated period. If the user gets distracted from their work, closing the application and moving to another, the tree withers. But a successful, focused, phone-use-free session leads to a blooming and vibrant forest, representing the user’s accomplishment. This app is a great way for students to avoid distractions and maintain focus. It also encourages a user to hold themself accountable.
Moodkit
Moodkit is a mood improvement app dedicated to making cognitive behavioral therapy simple and accessible, providing a set of therapeutic tools users can employ to cope. It helps users implement basic strategies of professional psychology into their daily life and on their own. It allows users to identify unhealthy thinking and work toward changing it through a journaling function and track their daily moods and eventually observe long-term patterns. The $4.99 app is primarily aimed to assist people who struggle with their mental health and experience depression and anxiety, but it can help anyone.
