We hear about reducing screentime for mental health, but what about intentional use? For over two decades I’ve used technology to support my mental well-being.
I began in Yahoo Groups, when a friend formed a group for women in twelve-step recovery from substance abuse who wanted to use those lessons in dealing with co-occurring mental health challenges. At any hour of the day or night I could log into my computer with my dial-up modem and connect with others who faced these issues with tools I knew – reading messages about this experience and posting my own words in reply. Alone in my living room I didn’t feel so all alone after all.
The 2000s birthed a number of targeted social media platforms. My first foray into these websites was with My Depression Team, in which I could connect with others who have depression and share about our symptoms, questions, solutions and triumphs. I already used Facebook, and sharing my health information online with others was something I’d been doing in my Yahoo Group for a bit.
I also found another social media platform called Patients Like Me, and signed up for their PTSD group. Not only could I share, but these platforms offered digital assessments that rated the severity of my symptoms, helping me decide when to reach out to my providers for extra care. Mood trackers were offered, helping me understand that perhaps I was just having a bad day, or maybe instead that I’d suffered far too many bad days in row.
In 2017 I developed my own mental health symptom tracker in Excel, that provides me measurable data about my trends. The tool helps me partner with my psychiatrist to figure out my goals in my treatment. I can print a report that shows what has worsened since my last visit, what has improved, and what symptoms have been especially severe. The report also allows me to include information about factors that may need to be considered – for example, if I was physically ill over that time. I’ve since incorporated a DBT diary card into the tracker. I fill out this tool on a daily basis.
In more recent years mental health apps have proliferated. Calm and Headspace are two apps that promote meditation. I’ve been using Finch for over a year – a fun little app that allows you to earn points for self-care activities such as setting goals, journaling or meditating. These points help you take care of a pet birb as s/he grows into an adult. You can dress your birb, decorate their bedroom and send them on adventures all while connecting with your Finch friends.
I was just introduced to another mental health app that was developed by the VA. Virtual Hope Box was so successful with vets that the Department of Defense has made it universally available, to vets and civilians alike. The app offers tools to help ground a person in crisis, distracting activities, or breathing exercises. Many of these tools can be customized so that the user is able to create their own personal Virtual Hope Box to turn to when support is needed.
I would love it if you left us all a message about tech solutions that have improved your mental health. What works? What helps? Share your experience with other Invincible Hope readers!
In 1988 I moved to Virginia, 8 years ‘stark raving sober’. My mother had just died, I was in an unstable codependent relationship with my boyfriend and cellphones and computers weren’t even in the picture. Connections with people were sparse during the transition. I never relapsed but I was miserable, isolated and depressed and made some regretably crappy and damaging choices.. I got to meetings, got a new sponsor and stabilized. Then in 2009 the theft of some paintings left to me by a dear friend who has passed away blindsided me. In the process of trying to provide information and photographs of the paintings to the police I came up short in that I only had “slides” of all the paintings from the 70s and they had to be put in a digital format to enable printing and emailing them as ‘JPEGS’. Technology in that area was foreign to me and one of the photographers at the US Photo store who digitized the slides suggested I go back to school to the Communication design program at the local community college. I went and it changed my life in a good way, I had been so bereft and then graduated with honors. Since then I have continued to work on the biography of my artist friend. Because of a website I made a local 4 year college put on an extensive show of his work. Because of the internet and Google I made contact with a professor overseas who helped with background information on the artist’s upbringing in China in the 1920’s before he moved to the US. My artist friend wanted buried in the Woodstock Artists Cemetery in Woodstock, NY and I was able to design his grave marker digitally and send photos to a stonemaker in NY to have it made and installed once I drove up there. Changing subjects to Covid, I was able to go to online meetings from 2019 to the present day and there’s not a day that goes by that I’m not grateful. Weary as I sometimes get of the constant presence of devices they have been a lifeline. A worldwide fellowship I am a member of has services online and I am able to stay up to date with my swimming, knitting, quilting and geneology groups which all enable me to stay active and remain mentally and spiritually fit.