Parija Rangnekar, Page 23 Author

Do you consider mind over matter important? As the saying goes, you should control your mind before it controls you. Most of us have finally grokked that talking to a friend can be an enormous help. Post pandemic era, the general rise in the wide awareness about mental health has led people to take therapy. Though a little unconventional, people prefer secretly talking and consulting with a therapist privately. That is the reason why there are so many therapist apps popping up on the market.

Therapist apps provide you with the privacy you seek. Not everybody can find a suitable person to vent out their feelings. When you are in emotional chaos or crumble under problems that are too complex, it is equally difficult sometimes to find a trained mental health professional. So therapy apps help a lot to take you out of an emotional pothole. Therapy apps let you find someone having the expertise to speak to via mobile phones, formal text, or video. These kinds of effortless connectivities are like godsend for some. For some people, it can be additional support to in-person therapy and for others, it can stand alone. And the best part is these platforms are curated to have security and privacy in the conversations.

From a teenager to an adult, everybody can indulge smartly and securely to practice mental well-being. For teenagers, it may feel weird to spill your guts into a face on your mobile phone, or for people with disorders such as depression and anxiety, or women having issues with the quality of life secondary treatment, neglect at home, domestic violence, etc; therapy mobile apps add a whole new avenue to speak up about these issues. It’s not that everyone with a smartphone cares for their mental well-being. Often, people pay attention to their physical health and they do regular exercise, eat nutritional food, take a good sleep, and stay hydrated. Just like your physical health, support for your mental health helps you feel your best and up in arms.

So, these therapy apps have a universal demand. According to the report published in reachandmarkets, The Global Mental Health Apps Market size is expected to reach $10. 2 billion by 2027, rising at a market growth of 16. 3% CAGR during the forecast period.

Many mental therapy apps are effortless to use and help you secure the well-being you deserve via their features. Many mental health apps can give you suggestions, tools and advice, mindful activities, and support to help you manage your stress. Some apps effectively manage general mental health issues and complex conditions. Many of the apps are free to download but these free apps provide access to only limited features. To access all of the features of an app, user needs to go for paid subscription.

Seeking help from therapy mobile apps can be intimidating but the real challenge is the real-time problem-solving capacity via its features. So, here is the list of some real-time practical features that can help to boost the productivity of the therapy apps.

First things first. Profile creation is an absolute initial step of building a therapy mobile application to sign-up and the profile creation feature. The sign-up step should be hassle-free and should not create anxiety for the users. Guaranties of the data and content that the users are putting in may give them an extra sigh of relief. Profile content should be separate for counsellors and patients. If the counsellors are ranked according to experience and feedback then it would minimise the struggle to find the right counsellor for patients. Most important thing is that profile settings should incorporate all the necessary data for utilizing the application like full name, region, age, location, gender, disorder, chronic illnesses, allergies, intolerances and so on. The patient should be given the option to upload all their prescriptions and documents, and reports on their profile.

One of the great advantages of mobile devices and the digital age is that it has simplified orderly living and eased the burden on people. With this feature, patients can easily book appointments with counsellors, set targets on the app and accomplish tasks on the dashboard. Calendar features can also be helpful beyond measures for female health tracking. This coupled with reminder features may boost your productivity and timely execution of the tasks you have subscribed to. So day by day, in every way, users would be growing. With reminder features, from teenagers to elderly patients, users can set reminders for their medicines. It is helpful for people suffering from Alzheimer’s, anxiety or depression.

Apps are imperfect if they are not easy to use. Many mental therapists suggest that having a suitable session is a must as people have different and complex sets of mental issues. So to do justice to everyone’s problems, therapy apps should come with a wide variety of sessions like mindfulness, music therapy, talking sessions, etc. The add on features like meet and greet with the favourite therapist will add a game-changing solution.

Tracking and self-monitoring the progress is one of the essential components of mental therapy. For this, therapy mobile applications can be useful to monitor complete well-being from day to day or month to month basis. Features like this are very handy to keep updated records of the sleep cycle, mood alterations, mental disorders, food intake, tracking metabolism and physical exercise, thoughts, sentiments, and so on. With an active dashboard that keeps on updating these indicators automatically, users can analyse information hustle-free or even refer them to their therapy counsellors. Other features like calendar, events tracking, and manual goal setting can help the app grow more.

While the whole world was in quarantine, video calling and group chatting were the main channels by which the people managed to keep a visual and live check on their loved ones. But these features are proving to be a blessing post-covid era. Telehealth services have sprung up from the covid-19 stage. Its usage was much higher during covid-19 and even now it is 38x higher than in the pre-covid stage. From gym instructors to therapy counselling, the live video sessions are the new normal. That is the reason it is important to add chat and video meeting features when you want to build the therapy mobile application. It can increase the app engagement along with the user and counsellor connection. Other features like screen sharing, documents transfer and media sharing might double the user interaction and usage across this platform. Along with that, you can even add other features such as video recording, screen sharing, document transferring and so on to make the therapy sessions more interactive.

If somebody asks you whether you like to watch a session or read about a session, then most of the time you would choose the first option. This feature can do wonders when it is unable for users to reach out to a counsellor. Video content is engaging, explanatory, creative and very satisfying when it comes to engagement with the audience. People are more used to listening to podcasts, video meditation and other blissful features. It is very beneficial for return on investment as it enhances your mobile app engagement. The use of video monitoring can go beyond the expectations as it can alter the mood and instructive session also helps to get rid of anxiety and loneliness, unwanted stress, and so on. Likewise, patients and counsellors can upload video and audio files from their therapy sessions on the off chance that they need to watch them once more. Users can easily scroll through the playlist and watch the content as per their needs.

For a person suffering from mental health issues, anxiety and depression-like attacks are common. If a person is having an anxiety attack or suffering from any mental disorder, then urgent care can be a godsend for them. So, now and then people having mental health disorders require urgent care. You can list the symptoms of any such panic attack and in this way, you can build an app that creates awareness. It’s a great way to build a self-care routine for users. With an urgent care feature users can get admittance to a quick emergency assistance call or somebody from an experienced counsellor.

Furthermore, you can add step-by-step directions on how to respond if there should arise an occurrence of urgent care and a tab with quick access to required contacts with a simple video tutorial or audio clip.

We have learned the hard truth that sharing is caring in the pandemic. Beyond sharing the useful things, sharing thoughts, and results can push other patients to do more better. Therapy mobile apps can also let apps sync with social media accounts and share their progress, ideas, and thoughts across various social media platforms. Peer to peer connectivity can let them send data directly to their counsellor or required trained professionals and their loved ones. Add some ‘how you feel’ and ‘mood’ feature on social media platforms and it can let the users share their progress that can motivate other users as well.

Remind users and patients how well they are doing and how much more they can accomplish with push notifications. These kinds of notifications increase app interaction and also alter the patient’s mood. Such alerts reminds the users to keep their mental health in check. For the day, patients can be reminded and motivated to do work out, practice meditation, read blissful information, practice relaxation, inform about therapy sessions, energize and brighten up their mood, and so on. A good engagement with content can help patients to indulge more and more in the application. So this is a must have feature for mobile app development.

Though the digital age is a blessing, it also is a bane. Many spyware attacks, bugs and hacking tools have changed the virtues of safety and security while using digital devices. A person suffering from a mental disease should be more careful as any such security breach might create extra anxiety and stress on the patient. So, being careful about data security is a must when you build a mobile app. The therapy mobile app will have all the sensitive details about the patients and counsellor which a mobile app developer should protect at any cost. Some high-level security features like multi-factor authentication, dynamic password, biometric authentication, voice recognition, OTP verification, etc. can assure the needed security.

But remember, apps are not a substitute for professional mental health care. They can ease your way to achieve your desired targets and goals efficiently.

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