For Young People > What Creates Mental Wellness?

Calming Tools, Apps, and Audio

An illustration of a young woman relaxing inside a giant pink pair of over-the-ear headphones.

Tools

Did you ever make “fortune tellers” in school? Here’s a fun way to turn them into a tool to manage your stress:

Opens in a new tab Stress catcher PDF

Apps

Here are some apps that can help you cope with challenges, stress, and tough emotions:

Mindfulness coach
Ages: 12+
Tools offered: Audio exercises, goal setting and tracking, education and other resources
Focuses on: stress and anxiety

Mindshift
Ages: preteen +
Tools offered: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy strategies, journals, calming audio, and goal setting for mindfulness.
Focuses on: anxiety and depression

SuperBetter
Ages: 13+
Tools offered: games to help with self-care and coping, ways to build relationships
Focuses on: anxiety and depression

CalmHarm
Ages: 12+
Tools offered: safe ways to release feelings including breathing, self-care, and distraction
Focuses on: controlling the urge to self-harm

See our Apps page Resources for more ideas.

Audio

Harvard Center for Wellness and Health Promotion offers:

Choosing mental wellness apps

Mental wellness apps include calming tools, meditation apps, mood and medicine trackers, and much more. Some combine several features. There are zillions of apps available, so how can we choose the most helpful ones?

To explore options and possible drawbacks, start by talking to your family, your health care provider, or your mental health provider, if you have one. They may have good suggestions and can help you consider:

  • How good is the app? If you see a mental health provider, you can ask them for recommendations. Opens in a new tabMindapps.org offers useful, trustworthy information about mood trackers and other self-care apps.
  • How simple is the app? Decide if you want one that focuses only on mood tracking, or one that also offers calming tools or trackers for things like sleep, activities, and gratitude. An app should be simple to use and tailored to what personally works for you.
  • Cost. Some apps are free to download, but then require or push you toward in-app payment or subscription.
  • Privacy. Is the company collecting, sharing, or selling your data? Can you opt out of data sharing? Can you delete data?
  • Connection. Can you share information from the app with a mental health provider if you’d like to do so?

Other self-care tools:

An illustration of a backpack and all of the things a young person might add to a self-soothing kit, including art-making supplies, candy, a music player, favorite photos, and more.
A Self-Soothing Kit
An illustration of a young woman laying on her back, arms cross behind her head, her eyes closed. Visions of things that might ground a person float above her.
Grounding Exercises
An illustration of a young man sitting cross-legged on the ground, blowing bubbles through a bubble wand.
Breathing Exercises