myStrength by Teladoc Health

The app is used through work as incentive for heath benefits. Last year you had to log in everyday for a period of time to get point rewards. It was a struggle then because as mentioned by other reviewers the app is not intuitive at all. The front page does not change based on your personalizations. I have the same topics there for over a year and even when you go to explore there are so many clicks to find a topic of interest. The app does not recognize the areas you spend the most time and move to the front page for easy access. Last year I got into a rhythm to find my section since I was doing it daily. This year the reward is to complete a session weekly. Each topic has so many sub layers I don’t even know what constitutes a “session “. The progress tab only seems to track sleeping and nothing else. I am not there for the sleeping section. No improvements have been made to the layout since I have had this app which is disappointing.

The whole point of mental health help is to get your thoughts, feelings, and very specific problems out onto paper, a platform that is suppose to save your answers, or a therapist who has notes and memory. Thanks to the pandemic, apps have become our new trusted advisors. You’d want your “trusted advisor” who is harboring all of your mental issues to maybe keep a memory of some kind so you can look back on your answers. NOPE. I spend an hour completing activities and really getting into my mindfulness. Then I go back to so I can re-read and share my answers with a person I trust LIKE THE APP TELLS ME TO DO, and they are all erased. I had 5 paragraphs of detailed entries. Nothing glitched, my phone didn’t die half way, it just decided to say it was complete and erase everything I did. This is quiet defeating for a person with sever mental health issues wouldn’t you? So I tested it and didn’t write anything, hit done and it still said “activity completed.” Nothing makes you feel more like you wasted your time than not seeing a word of what you wrote. The least this app could do to make some sort of effort for their users or “patients” is to save what they write down.

I rarely review apps, but I believe mental health is very important so I decided to give this a go. I think it has too many things to look at and is not personalized enough. On the main activities page I was expecting to only see the activities relevant to the options I chose. I like how there is a tracker of the activities I have completed; although, it was a little non-intuitive to find the tracker in the me > account section > my information. I think it belongs in the progress tab, because it is progress to complete things. The app is overall a good idea. This is only my first day exploring the app, so I will continue using and see how it goes. Sidenote: I found the app through my KP (Kaiser Permanente) app and signed on there with my KP username/pass. Then I completed the email/pass for further sign-on.