This week we discussed mobile psychiatric apps. These types of apps are becoming increasingly popular as our smartphone usage is increasing. These apps give patients with mental health disorders the opportunity to self assess and monitor their symptoms and well as feel as sense of empowerment by doing this.
Psychiatric apps can be used by patients with many disorders like PTSD, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and alcoholism. Since I have had personal experience with PTSD I am very interested in apps that help PTSD patients. My grandfather is a retired army veteran who served in World War II and the Vietnam War. After returning home, he suffered from severe PTSD. He rarely sought help for his disorder. He felt embarrassed and even scared and did not want to travel to see a professional. However, If these mobile apps had been available then, they would have been very beneficial to him. These apps help eliminate the stigma that is associated with these disorders. He would have been able to monitor his symptoms and complete therapy by himself and if his symptoms increased in severity he could reach a health professional if he wanted.
There are many applications that help patients with PTSD. Some of these include PTSD Coach, Virtual Hope Box, The Objective Zero, and Mindfulness Coach. I have researched many of these apps. However, I became very familiar with PTSD Coach. This app is an excellent tool for PTSD patients because it allows them to assess and track their symptoms as well as have access to coping tools if their symptoms are triggered in everyday situations.
As a future clinician, I believe I would utilize these types of apps to educate patients and encourage them to use them to become more familiar with their disorders and symptoms. I think that these psychiatric apps could be used alone to help patients with mild forms of their disorder. However, with increasing severity of these disorders, I believe these apps would be best used in conjunction with conventional mental health therapies such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
I find it interesting that their are some many applications focused specifically on PTSD. I think this shows how prevalent the issue is in our society today. I do find it interesting that most of these programs have focused on use by veterans, when there are multitude of other forms of PTSD which exist. However, I think a community platform on psychiatric apps that focus on PTSD within veterans can be very beneficial. At the same time, one must be careful in platforms like these as detailed events of ones combat may trigger another veterans PTSD.
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