How to Develop a Mental Health App

1. Mental health/mood trackers

Users primarily track day-to-day changes in their mood, thoughts, feelings, emotions, and behavior. One popular feature is a mood journal, where they can regularly check-in. They can also set daily mental health goals.

Moodfit is a noteworthy mention in this category. It offers a broad selection of mental health tools, daily goals, personalized insights, and helpful content.

2. Educational

Educational mental health apps may teach users about mental disorders or impact coping skills. They can leverage various content formats and aids such as quizzes or activities.

Moodmission gives users five evidence-based methodologies to minimize mood disturbances and prevent mental issues from developing.

Better Stop Suicide is another app that promotes suicide awareness through an educational based-approach.

3. General self-help apps

Self-help apps motivate users to achieve things on their own — focusing on problem resolution and empowerment. This ties into the core mission of promoting better mental health.

The iBreathe iOS app promotes breathing exercises to reduce stress and anxiety.

Sleep Time app provides an alarm clock and sleep-cycle tracker.

Goal-setting and healthy eating apps are additional examples of general self-care apps.

4. Specific mental disorder self-help apps

A broad range of mental conditions impact behavior, feelings, and thinking. Prevalent types include clinical depression, anxiety disorder, PTSD, OCD, and attention deficit. People diagnosed with the conditions may need targeted assistance, driving the demand for apps helping with specific mental disorders.

The NOCD app caters to persons suffering from OCD. It grants access to a supportive community, guided treatment tools, and therapy sessions with OCD therapists.

Recovery Record provides a path to recovery for a wide range of eating disorders. It instructs on evidence-based coping methods, recovery journeys, and progress tracking.

5. Online teletherapy apps

Teletherapy apps facilitate mental health counseling via the internet rather than in-person. According to a McKinsey analysis, the use of telehealth increased up to 38 times compared to pre-Covid baselines. McKinsey projects massive growth for telehealth due to strong uptake, favorable customer sentiment, and increased investments.

Talkspace is one of the leading teletherapy platforms with a user base of over 1 million. Their mobile apps facilitate video communications and matches to licensed therapists.

Note: As you make a mental health mobile app, online teletherapy may be the standout feature or complement other tools.

6. Addiction Recovery

An addiction recovery app improves a person’s physical, psychological, and social well-being by providing coping techniques to deal with cravings and prevent relapse.

I Am Sober is one of the better-known recovery apps with over 1 million downloads on the Google Play store. Users can create pledges, track their sobriety, learn from others, and access community support.

7. Self-Development

Self-development applications augment the users’ abilities, skills, personalities, and characters. Positive change enhances their quality of life by promoting happiness, emotional resilience, and mental strength.

The apps can delve into a wide range of skills and abilities. BetterMe provides holistic health coaching and tracking, focusing on the user’s life goals, diet, workout, and fitness. Lifesum can also serve as a great reference point for a self-development app.

8. Meditation & Mindfulness

A meditation health app generally offers digital meditation tools such as timers, soundtracks, and activities: breathing exercises, chants, affirmations & mantras.

The surging popularity of meditation and mindfulness is reflected in the massive downloads the apps receive. Top apps in this category include Smiling Mind, Calm, Headspace, Buddhify, and Insight Timer.

9. Cognitive and brain training

Cognitive and brain training applications exercise the mind. They are packaged as fun games to train on memory, problem-solving, and creativity.

Luminosity is an archetypical brain training game with over 14 years of experience and a fan base of over 100 million. Its iOS app has a 4.7 rating.

Experts initially downplayed the role of brain training games due to the lack of fact-based evidence to back their benefits. But preliminary results from various studies point to the effectiveness of cognitive training across a broad range of mental illnesses.

1. Subscriptions: B2C and B2B

A typical subscription model adopted by several mental health apps such as Calm is to offer a free trial for about seven days, with all the features unlocked. Customers need to subscribe to the paid plan to continue enjoying premium access or may lose access privileges.

They can pay a monthly or yearly rate. You can similarly offer a life plan at a discounted flat rate.

Don’t just limit yourself to consumer subscriptions. It’s vital to offer business packages for companies looking for group plans for their employees.

2. Brand partnerships

As the popularity of mental health apps grows, the business can seek brand partnerships. Contracts may entail content licensing, physical product promotion, and direct advertising through marketing campaigns.

3. Traditional advertising

The revenue model relies on selling advertising real estate to advertisers. Free apps leveraging this model should run ads aligned with the niche. For instance, it may be annoying for users enjoying a calming meditation to encounter disruptive mobile game ads.

You’ll only need to join a mobile advertising network to start featuring ads, but remember to evaluate their ad formats, revenue models, reputation, and user-friendliness.

4. In-app sponsorships

The sponsorship model works for a free app with traction and an endearing user base. Sponsors are entities that commit their money to your app in exchange for promotional benefits.

They don’t have to clutter your application with ads. Think of creative ways to push their promotions, for instance, sponsored posts, giveaways, or free consultations.

5. Donations and grants

Not-for-profit apps in mental health can rely on donations from well-wishers who believe in their cause. Donors can continue supporting the app’s development through continuous grants and donations.

Smiling Mind is an example of a non-profit app that works with well-wishers to further its core goal of reaching young minds in Australia. Some of their philanthropic partners have contributed more than $1 million, including Buildcorp and the Australian Government Department of Health.

You can also get funding for an app idea to meet development costs.

1. Market and competitors research

Market research entails gathering and analyzing data on the market conditions, consumers, and competing applications. It can reveal favorable and unfavorable market conditions that will determine the app’s potential to get downloads. Proper market research offers insight into features people want, who might subscribe, and what price they are willing to pay.

After careful competitor and market research, you formulate the main idea and the app’s marketing strategy.

2. Find developers

Place a lot of emphasis on finding the right design and development partner. The wrong choice can doom the project even before it starts.

Now, there are various places to find programmers, design experts, and software development teams:

• Clutch: The online resource hosts a comprehensive directory of companies, mainly in development, design, marketing, and IT services. It provides dynamic search options using specific criteria. One of its biggest benefits is real and verified reviews. Clutch can supply custom shortlists to clients based on their project details, budget, and timelines for a fee.
• Dribble: The best design professionals worldwide showcase their design projects on Dribble. You can browse through the design portfolios in each category and chat with the designers. Clients can post their job publicly to accept submissions.
• Behance: Creatives from all over the world showcase their work on Behance. It offers an intuitive way to discover projects using images, prototypes, people, and mood boards.
• Freelance developer platforms: Online freelance platforms can help with the search for talented software developers. But the process can often be a hit or miss. Top freelance platforms to find developers include Upwork, Toptal, Freelance.com, YouTeam, and Fiverr.

As an alternative to Clutch, clients can use GoodFirms.

Some handy tips to use during the developer evaluation process include:

• Looking for developers with relevant experience in wellness & mental health niches;
• Evaluating their development process and methodology;
• Assessing the quality and complexity of past projects;
• Analyzing their reputation and customer reviews.

3. Prototypes and design

Product design is the second stage in the mobile development process. The end goal is to produce an attractive and easy-to-use user interface. There are several stages completed during the design stage in the lead up to the final design:

• User stories: The stories describe how users will accomplish their goals by using the app — for instance, how someone will use a stress-management app to track their daily moods. It’s an important stage in pre-design.
• User-flow: The user flow shows the steps or path taken by the user to accomplish in-app tasks. A user flow diagram best showcases it.
• Sketching: It offers a means for the designer to explore, refine, and communicate the main idea.
• Wireframing: The design becomes more concrete when the designer produces overviews of the app, showing its structure, elements, and flow.
• Component design: Components include tables, lists, forms, headers, and other little pieces that make up the app.
• Creating prototypes: Building the prototype allows the design team to validate their design ideas and test assumptions. That’s because it shows how the interface will work in real life.

There are several things to pay attention to during the UI design process. Never lose focus on the audience and their goals. Set clear expectations about the process and the deliverables to avoid hiccups. Start with a low-fidelity prototype with a lower level of interactivity, content, and visual design to avoid expensive changes down the line.

4. Build an MVP

Worried about how to make a mental health tracker app? Don’t focus on availing of many features in the first release. Build a minimal viable product with sufficient features to onboard early adopters.

MVPs can reveal market demand and provide insights into future performance. It’s more cost-effective and provides clarity on the idea.

Must-have features in the MVP will differ based on the category:

• Mental healthcare tracker (Mood entry, gratitude journal, and insights)
• Meditation apps (Timer, meditation sounds, or guided meditation audios)
• Specific mental illness apps (Therapeutic tools, tracker, peer community, or ERP therapy)
• Addiction recovery (Challenges, sobriety progress tracker, inspiration quotes, or professional advice)
• Teletherapy (Therapist selection & matching, voice, text, or video messaging)
• Educational mental health apps (Educational sections, mental health tests, and quizzes)

Apps tracking user progress may require a corresponding way to create profiles, backup, and secure data. Not all apps require a way to sign in.

Ultimately, the MVP’s features should be aligned with the main goal and informed by competitor research. If there are multiple features to consider, just rank them in order of importance.

5. Release and improving

Prior to the app’s release, it will be necessary to conduct alpha or beta testing.

The app should be benchmarked for performance, checked for errors, and examined for resource issues.

The release of the MVP is only the beginning. Initial marketing campaigns should follow to spread the word about the app. Once new users start streaming in, collecting mental health app statistics and asking for feedback is paramount. The app will be updated later by adding new features or making course corrections.