MindShift CBT - Anxiety Relief

This app claims to be a CBT centered app for anxiety disorders and I think that claim is pretty true to the content. Two main components of cognitive-behavioral therapy are exposure and cognitive reconstructing. This app does a really good job of including both of those elements. As far as exposure therapy goes, the section ‘taking action’ offers a really detailed activity for scheduling activities to face your fears and anxieties. There are reasonable examples and options to create stepping stones instead of diving straight in. The coping cards are really good for cognitive restructuring, as they allow you to put negative or overwhelming thoughts into better perspective. The daily mood check is another tool that helps you become mindful of your thoughts and feelings, which is a good starting place when determining what thoughts need to be restructured. The only problem with this app is that it doesn’t encompass all anxiety disorders. There is no segment for people who suffer from OCD or PTSD. There are still great tools on the app that will benefit everyone, but creating segments for the different anxiety disorders and not including all subtypes feels invalidating. Overall, this app is a really good everyday tool to help with some anxiety disorders, however definitely not meant to replace traditional therapy. I think it is mostly successful with mindfulness. Becoming aware of your thoughts and having resources to calm you down if you are stressed is always a nice tool to have available.

After reviewing and critiquing MindShift CBT, I rank the app a 4 out of 5. While the app has many strengths such as providing a simple and user friendly preface that allows its users to very easily use it as a positive tool, I feel that if there was a social aspect with the app, it would attract more users. Especially given that the adolescent population thrives off of forming connections and having a social network. MindShift CBT is very informative without being intimidating or overwhelming. I feel if the app incorporated additional videos and/or other visuals, it would be more appealing to adolescents as the app is primarily filled with just text. Many adolescents are visual learners and this is a weakness I see within the app. I would highly recommend this app to adolescents I plan to work with in the future as well as recommend it to adults looking for another outlet to help explore their own anxiety and mental health.

MindShift claims that it is geared toward adolescents, and therefore, its functionality and appropriateness should be evaluated through the psychosocial development of adolescents. According to Laser (2010), it is important for adolescents to have an ample vocabulary to be able to identify their emotions beyond “tired” or “fine.” Adolescents experience complicated emotions during this time of life, and it is crucial that they are able to identify and name these feelings, especially so they can have control over their behaviors and learn to self-regulate. MindShift does a fine job of supporting this necessary development of adolescence, as it provides the user with an in-depth list of emotions tied to their anxiety and specific symptoms they may be experiencing. While MindShift allows users to share progress with whomever they please, it does not allow for interaction among users. According to a recent study conducted through a social media website for adolescents with depression and anxiety, one of the most liked features was the ability to write on blog posts and see positive quotes and stories (Radovic, 2018). Adolescents oftentimes use social media to feel connected to one another, therefore, MindShift should consider enabling a feature that allows adolescents struggling with anxiety to share their stories with each other.