'Beating the Blues With pixels'

In the heart of South Africa, smart technologies come to the rescue in assisting those dealing with anxiety and depression. There are many challenges that stop people in getting the help they need. Hurdles are numerous, especially those who live outside urban areas. Accessing mental health care is often costly and requires quite some travel which is often not possible due to lack of local amenities. The demand for applications aimed to support mental health is high. They have shown excellent results in other countries. Smartphones and the smartphone apps are everywhere so why not use them to improve access to mental health care. We need research to support the use of these apps in South Africa. Apps need to be tailored and properly tested before they can be trusted. After all, we don't want to make life more complicated for people. Imagine a phone app telling you how to manage your feelings. It's not likely to ever replace a kind face or words of reassurance but a world where you know that extra support is accessible through your device. Any time you need it. That's pretty cool. There's a whole conversation around apps eventually replacing an in person visit to the mental health clinic and that's simply not going to happen

anytime soon. They do, however, have the power to reach some individuals who otherwise might not have responded to therapy or advice at all. Whether you believe apps are good or harrassing this new study investigating the use of a popular Smartphone app Vimbo as a tool to fight depression and anxiety will go a long way in helping many. If you start asking questions you'll see that there a few apps for users who, perhaps by choice or circumstances, prefer to use them as stand-alone tools to improve mood or overcome worry. We all shift through a set os emotions and snippets of thoughts linked to images in movies or textings apps like WhatsApp . It can be an issue to turn it off. Our notebook of electronics is so engaging it might be good to like do a relapse perhaps to the good old paper notes! Now back to depression. It raises an interesting question of whether an app could realistically replace time taken by a mental health professional. What's clear is apps definitely complement existing structures without harm and if used correctly, they could help path for more people to begin talking about their mental health in the first place

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