10 Best Mental Health Apps for iOS in 2024

Mental health has become an increasingly prominent focus in today's tech-savvy world, with numerous apps designed to aid various aspects of mental well-being. These applications cater to diverse needs, from meditation and mood tracking to specialized support for conditions like ADHD and anxiety. Below is a comprehensive guide to the best mental health apps for iOS in 2024, each excelling in its category.

Overview: Balance offers innovative, personalized meditation experience that helps people improve their stress, sleep, focus, mood, and more. The app boasts a category-leading 4.9-star rating on the Apple AppStore.
Key Features:

• Meditation for Anxiety relief: Get personalized anxiety relief with meditations that quiet your worries, relax your body, and leave you feeling more calm and capable.
• Beginner-friendly: if you've never meditated, Balance might be a perfect fit for you.
• Meditation for Sleep: Get a great night of sleep with meditations, stories, music, and more, expertly designed to help you fall asleep fast and wake up refreshed.
• Meditation for Breathing: Learn how to use your inhales and exhales to calm down, clear your mind, relax deeply, and relieve stress.

Why It’s the Best: Balance stands out for its simplicity, personalisation, high-quality content, making it suitable for both beginners and experienced meditators.
Pricing: 1 year free trial, then $69.99 / Annually

Overview: How We Feel is a free app created by scientists, designers, engineers, and therapists to help people better understand their emotions and find strategies to help them navigate their emotions in the moment. Conceived in conjunction with Yale University's Center for Emotional Intelligence and based on the work of Dr Marc Brackett, How We Feel helps people find the right word to describe how they feel while tracking their sleep, exercise, and health trends using HealthKit in order to spot patterns over time.
Key Features:

• Check in to track your emotions
• Spot patterns as they appear over time
• Learn new ways to help yourself in the moment

Why It’s the Best: Simple and amazingly designed app that helps you to track your emotions in two clicks, become more self-aware each day, and find out your mood patterns.
Pricing: Free.

Overview: Day One is the original digital journal app. A decade of updates and feature additions make it one of the most private, trusted, and easiest-to-use journaling app.
Key Features:

• Multiple Journals: Users can maintain separate journals for different aspects of their life.
• Photo and Audio Entries: Support for multimedia entries enhances the journaling experience.
• Prompts and Templates: Helps users overcome writer's block with prompts and templates.

Why It’s the Best: Day One's comprehensive features and sleek design make it a standout choice for digital journaling, appealing to both casual and serious diarists.
Pricing: Free, with Premium available at $34.99 / Annually

Overview: I Am Sober is more than just a free sobriety counter app.

Along with tracking your sober days, it helps you build new habits and provides ongoing motivation by connecting you to a wide network of people all striving for the same goal: staying sober one day at a time.

Key Features:

• Sober day tracker: To visualize how long you’ve been sober.
• Remember why you quit. Add reasons and photos to help you remember why you want to quit your addiction and stay sober.
• Analyze triggers. Recap each day and find patterns that made your day easier or more challenging than the last.
• Share your story. Either with others or for yourself, take photos and journal your progress directly in the app. Then choose to share it or save it as a reminder for yourself.
• Milestone tracker. Track and celebrate your milestones from 1 day, to 1 week, to 1 month and beyond.
• Create a group. Stay accountable together and track your sobriety privately. Groups are great for complimenting your real-world group like Alcoholics Anonymous, NA, SA, SMART Recovery, or your rehab center.

Why It’s the Best: The app's combination of tracking, reflection, and community support makes it an invaluable resource for those on the path to sobriety.
Pricing: Free, with Premium available at $39.99 / Annually

Overview: Mindful Powers is an award-winning, kid-first, holistic approach to helping young minds learn and practice mindfulness so they can respond more effectively to stressful situations through the power of play. Built on a skills-based approach that helps children in early and middle childhood build a healthier relationship with life, stress, and anxiety, Mindful Powers empowers kids to bring calm to their lives at the touch of their fingertips.

Key Features:

• Mindful Play. Through a series of 10 progressive and interactive voice-guided sessions, kids learn how to master the powers of mindfulness – the ability to know and understand what is happening in one’s head at any given moment, without getting carried away by it.
• Focus Time: self-set timer helps kids set mental parameters around a given task by applying focus time until completion. When the focus timer is on, Mindful Powers deters kids from using the device for any other purpose, encouraging them to work towards completing their tasks.

Why It’s the Best: Through the holistic approach Mindful Powers helps young minds learn and practice mindfulness so they can respond more effectively to stressful situations through the power of play.
Pricing: Free

Overview: Panic attack and anxiety relief right in your pocket.

Key Features:

• Panic Attack SOS button. A panic button to bring a swift end to panic attacks based on the latest techniques in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
• Lessons: Find some peace of mind by learning about where anxiety comes from, how our bodies and minds experience panic attacks, and why this all might be happening to you.
• Breathing exercises: The perfect tool to practice deep breathing daily and find calm during times of stress.
• Journal: Track and identify moods, habits, and subconscious triggers of anxiety and panic attacks.

Why It’s the Best: An app developed for for conquering panic attacks and anxiety that blends a guided process for both immediate and long term relief, with clean and engaging design.
Pricing: Free, with Premium available at $59.99 / Annually

Overview: With LINA, you can engage in art therapy at your own pace on your mobile device and receive smart insights into your mental health based on what you create.

Key Features:

• Personalised Art therapy program
• Art therapy activities for anxiety relief, mindfulness and self-love
• Art psychology tests allows you to receive insights on your personality based on your drawings
• Reflection Oracle cards
• Empowering meditations

Why It’s the Best: Developed by certified art therapists, LINA offers bite-sized and entertaining art therapy activities, which serve as a meditation for your mind and allow you to improve your mental well-being through drawing.
Pricing: Free, with Premium available at $39.99 / Annually

Overview: Shimmer provides 'bite sized' ADHD coaching to people with ADHD or executive function challenges. Shimmer was born from a group of ADHD coaches, psychiatrists, doctors, and engineers to create a personalized, ACTION-oriented playground for you and your coach to explore.

Key Features:

• Attend weekly 1:1 check-ins with your coach
• Personalized plan each week catered to you
• Experiment with tailored skills, strategies, and routines
• Text-based accountability check-ins throughout the week from your coach
• Learn ADHD skills and tips through bite-sized learning modules

Why It’s the Best:

• An expert ADHD coach that knows ADHD inside out and understands them
• An accountability partner to hold them to what they said they’d do
• Someone to help them break down big tasks to feel less overwhelmed
• Guidance to navigate the sea of content and resources out there
• Personalized positive reinforcement, support and celebration of the little things
• Weekly cadence to make baby steps for changes in their life
• An affordable alternative to traditional ADHD coaching that fits into their life

Pricing: Starting from $114.99/month for 15 min weekly meetings.

Overview: Sleep Cycle is a smart alarm clock and sleep tracker that helps users improve their sleep quality by waking them up during their lightest sleep phase.

Key Features:

• Sleep Analysis: Tracks sleep patterns and provides detailed analysis.
• Smart Alarm: Wakes users during the optimal sleep phase for a refreshed morning.
• Snore Detection: Monitors and analyzes snoring patterns to provide insights and solutions.
• Library of sleep stories, relaxation guides and calm sleep sounds specially designed to help you fall asleep easier.

Why It’s the Best:
Sleep Cycle's advanced tracking and smart alarm features make it an essential tool for anyone looking to enhance their sleep quality and overall well-being by smart sleep analysis.
Pricing: Free, with Premium available at $39.99 / Annually.

❗️Depression is a serious mental health condition. If you concerned about your mental health, seek profession support and don't rely on self-help. That's why here we recommend an app-based platform with online therapy sessions.

Overview: BetterHelp is the convenient way to get professional help from a licensed therapist. With over 30,000 trained, experienced, and accredited therapists covering a wide range of areas – from depression and anxiety to family and couples therapy

Key Features:

• Over 30,000 licensed, accredited, and highly experienced therapists
• Match with the right therapist for you based on your needs, preferences and location
• Send your therapist a message as often as you want
• Schedule live sessions with your therapist or use the secured messenger
• Gain access to constructive, educational group webinars

Why It’s the Best: BetterHelp is the best therapy platform due to its accessibility, affordability, and convenience, offering flexible scheduling, multiple communication options, and a wide network of licensed therapists.
Pricing: The cost of therapy through BetterHelp ranges from $60 to $90 per week (billed every 4 weeks).

While mental health apps offer numerous benefits, it's essential to consider both the pros and cons before incorporating them into your mental health care routine.
Pros:

• Accessibility: Mental health apps provide convenient access to resources and support anytime, anywhere.
• Affordability: Many mental health apps offer free or low-cost options, making therapy and self-care more accessible to a broader audience.
• Variety: With thousands of mental health apps available, users can choose from a wide range of tools and techniques to meet their individual needs.
• Privacy: Mental health apps often prioritize user privacy and confidentiality, allowing individuals to seek support without fear of judgment or stigma.
• Community Support: Some mental health apps include features such as peer support groups, online forums, or virtual communities where users can connect with others who are experiencing similar challenges, providing a sense of solidarity and support.

Cons:

• Effectiveness: While some mental health apps are backed by research and evidence-based therapies, others may lack scientific validation or efficacy.
• Reliance: Overreliance on mental health apps may deter individuals from seeking professional care or developing essential coping skills.
• Quality: Not all mental health apps are created equal, and some may contain inaccurate information or outdated resources.
• Accessibility Barriers: Despite their potential benefits, mental health apps may not be accessible to everyone, particularly those without smartphones or internet access.
• Lack of Human Connection: While mental health apps can provide valuable resources and support, they may lack the human connection and empathy that comes from direct interaction with a trained therapist or counselor. Some users may find it challenging to form meaningful therapeutic relationships or express themselves fully through a digital platform.
• Dependency Risks: While mental health apps can be valuable tools for promoting self-care and emotional well-being, users should be cautious of developing dependency on these apps as their sole source of support. Overreliance on mental health apps may hinder users' ability to develop coping skills, resilience, and self-efficacy, ultimately undermining their long-term mental health and well-being.

Conclusion
The mental health app market continues to expand, offering innovative and accessible solutions for various needs. Whether you're looking for meditation, mood tracking, journaling, or specialized support for children, anxiety, ADHD, CBT, sleep, or sobriety, there's an app designed to help. Each of these apps excels in its respective category, providing users with the tools they need to enhance their mental well-being in 2024.