[FREE] apps that can help promote positive mental health.

It’s quite common thesedays to come across apps that claim to aid the recovery of stress and anxiety to help us sleep and relax. Each app isn’t going to work for everyone, and some could make our minds more alert rather than relaxed. After trying and testing a selection of apps, I found these to be the most useful:

Rain Sounds – Sleep & Relax.

I already find the pitted patter of raindrops on a window to be very relaxing whether it takes place during the daytime or at night, so I knew a soundboard of different rain sounds would be soothing. Ranging from the sound of a rainforest to something so precise as rain on leaves, you can preselect a track’s duration lasting anywhere between a 1 minute to 8 hours. I find that a 3 hour loop is least frustrating and by then I have managed to fall asleep to the sounds. Additionally you can control extra sounds within a track, for instance the perfect storm app can add piano sounds and the thunder’s intensity can be adjusted to your preference. In total there are 13 tracks, some of which are other water sounds including sounds of the ocean and a lake. 

Mental Health Music

This app doesn’t give much of a selection as the previous app I mentioned, but it seems like repetion of a song is more effective for relaxing than a long playlist. The app focuses on using piano music. Listening to to the likes of Chopin and Bach gives a slow-steady pace which is relaxing but upbeat for setting an ‘uplifting’ mood. You may loop a single track or the whole playlist for between 15 minutes to infinity. 

Lumosity

Mental health and mindfulness isn’t always about emotional aspects, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder etc, it also includes the functions of our memories and how we should all strive to prevent Dementia and general memory loss through age. Lumosity is composed of memory games and tests which should be played daily at least for 20-30 minutes. I particularly find the puzzles to be nicely distracting.