The Best Mental Health Apps, According to a Therapist

• Costs: For mental health services: $69 to $109 per week for therapy, billed as a monthly subscription; $299 for initial psychiatry evaluation, $179 per follow-up session; Talkspace Go costs $29.99 per month

• Services Offered: Online therapy, messaging, classes, live workshops, reflection questions

• Platforms: iOS and Android

• Free Trial: Yes, 7-day free trial of Talkspace Go

Talkspace actually offers two apps: the primary one, called "Talkspace Therapy & Counseling" on Google Play and "Talkspace Therapy & Support" on the App Store, is specifically for current members as a conduit of communication with their therapist. The other one, called Talkspace Go, is chock-full of helpful, educational resources like mindfulness exercises, classes, therapist-led live workshops, and reading materials.

While the first is exclusively for Talkspace therapy clients, anyone can download and subscribe to Talkspace Go (it’s included in some Talkspace therapy subscriptions as well). In fact, because Talkspace Go is a self-guided counseling app that lets you pinpoint the things you most want to work on, Talkspace recommends using it in conjunction with your therapy sessions—whether or not you’re working with a Talkspace therapist.

As an online therapy provider, Talkspace stands out because you can access so many kinds of therapy through its primary app, including individual adult therapy, couples therapy, and teen therapy, even psychiatry and medication management. The main function of this app is to message your therapist, for anything from discussing scheduling to checking in on homework assignments to getting just that extra bit of support in between sessions. Plus, everything available on the Talkspace website is available on the app: signing up for services, getting matched with a provider, and scheduling and attending appointments (including video, audio, and chat-based sessions). You can even check your insurance coverage right through the app.

I had 12 people try various therapy services, including individual, couples, and teen therapy, and overall most were happy with their experiences. The general consensus was that their Talkspace therapists were qualified, friendly, and helpful, guiding conversations and making my testers feel comfortable opening up. Being able to choose which type of session they wanted—video, audio, or live chat—personalized the experience, and all were available through the app. Holistic, affordable mental health care, through an app? We’re fans.

“I found the signup process intuitive and the website easy to navigate. The app is very functional, and made it easy to schedule sessions remotely, message my therapist on the fly, and even log into video sessions from anywhere.”

— Talkspace tester, pleased with the app’s accessibility

My testers’ biggest complaint with Talkspace is the short session times. At only half an hour, many testers felt like they were only able to scratch the surface of what they wanted to discuss in their sessions. This led to some of them feeling less supported by their therapists. This was especially evident when their therapists didn’t lead the sessions with questions and driving insights, instead leaving my testers to guide the conversation on their own.

• Costs: $70 to $100 per week, billed as a monthly subscription

• Services Offered: Online therapy, messaging, journaling, worksheets

• Platforms: iOS and Android

• Free Trial: No

BetterHelp is one of the oldest and biggest online therapy companies out there, and it’s kept up with the times by offering easily accessible services through its app, available on any mobile device. You can do everything you need to right in BetterHelp’s app: sign up for services, get matched with a therapist, schedule appointments, and attend video, audio, or live chat sessions. It’s an entire online therapy service in your pocket, accessible anywhere and anytime.

But the thing my testers (nine of them) appreciated the most was the ability to contact their therapists between sessions through the app—and the fact that BetterHelp guarantees a prompt response. Not many other online therapy services offer this kind of support, which could be imperative to someone who is struggling between their weekly sessions and needs a reminder that they have somebody in their corner.

It would be one thing to message your therapist and have them reply, “We’ll talk about that in our next session”—not super helpful, right? But most of my testers’ BetterHelp therapists went above and beyond in their answers to their messages, offering responses that were thoughtful and useful as well as timely. And because the messaging service is available through the app, my testers were always able to have access to their therapists. Sometimes, you just need that little bit of extra TLC to get you through the week.

“I liked the app. It is easy to navigate with button options for my conversations with my therapist, a button to view and schedule appointments, a button for journaling, and a button to view any worksheets or assignments I’d been given between sessions.”

— BetterHelp tester who had a great experience with the company’s therapy services 

One of my testers was right in calling BetterHelp “therapy light”—although its services are widely available, every single one of my testers left their sessions feeling as though BetterHelp is best for people who are looking for some general support around minor life challenges and not for people with more serious issues or mental health concerns.

I'm also not a fan of BetterHelp' pricing structure. Basically, in areas where BetterHelp's services are more in demand, BetterHelp charges more for those services.

• Costs: Free to download, $12.99 monthly subscription, $69.99 annual subscription; $149 per online therapy session

• Services Offered: Meditation exercises, mindfulness exercises, sleep exercises, stress exercises, online therapy

• Platforms: iOS, Android

• Free Trial: Yes, 14 days

Starting a meditation practice—or even just trying out your first meditation exercise—can be intimidating, but Headspace makes meditation easy. With over 1,000 exercises available, you can browse through several different categories (like sleep and stress) that walk you through all types of exercises: long and short, visual and auditory, instructive and soothing. And each meditation is easy to use, with clear, simple language.

Rather than just telling you to “empty your mind” (because really, that’s impossible), Headspace helps you get in touch with your brain and body by offering everything from mindfulness exercises (where you focus on the here-and-now, noticing the sights and sounds around you and how your body feels) to guided meditations (where a narrator walks you through imagery or ideas designed to calm you down or focus you) to body scans (where you take a few minutes to notice how each part of your body is feeling at that moment and physically release tension). Exercises like these can teach you how to control your breathing, prevent a panic spiral, and check in with yourself when you’re feeling overwhelmed or stressed—without having to look any further than this one simple app.

We tried Headspace for a month, and were thrilled with how easy the app made it to design—and stick to—a meditation practice. Every day, Headspace suggested a “featured meditation,” which made jumping into meditation very easy by giving my tester a place to start. She could pick as many or as few meditations to do in a day as she wanted, and particularly liked the shorter ones—each just a couple of minutes—that she could easily incorporate into her busy day. With a wide variety of meditation exercises that left her feeling more relaxed every single time, it’s easy to recommend Headspace for someone who wants to learn more about meditation.

In addition, Headspace now also offers online therapy services, which you can access through the app as well.

“I used a combination of visual and auditory meditations. Due to my schedule, I preferred the shorter meditations (five minutes or less) because it allowed me to check in with myself in between tasks during my work day. I additionally preferred meditations that reminded me to check in with my body, where I was holding tension, and what unmet needs I might have in the moment. I found that I had less muscle tension using the app than before I started.”

— Headspace tester who had previously tried the app 

One of the things to keep in mind when it comes to any mental health app is privacy, and Headspace is no exception. It says in its privacy policy that it shares user information like demographics with advertisers, so be aware of that before you sign up. It does claim, however, to be HIPAA-compliant, which means that it follows federal law protecting personal health information.

In addition, while some mental health apps offer free versions that include a more limited selection of exercises, there is no free version of Headspace—after the 14-day free trial, you have to pay for either the monthly or yearly subscription in order to keep using it.

• Costs: Free to download, $79.99 annual subscription, $399.99 lifetime subscription

• Services Offered: Meditation exercises, sleep stories, soundscapes, music playlists

• Platforms: iOS, Android

• Free Trial: Yes, 7 days

Calm is here to help you sleep. It offers soundscapes (like a rainforest or a thunderstorm) to play as white noise as you’re lying in bed, guided meditations that walk you through relaxing your mind and body to get ready for sleep, music playlists to wind you down, and sleep stories specifically designed to help you drift off quickly. And with literally hundreds of exercises and resources available, you’re sure to find something that calms you and that overactive nervous system of yours (read: slow your breathing, get in touch with your body, and quiet the doomscrolling in your mind) so that you can get a good night’s sleep.

My two testers of Calm couldn’t get enough of its sleep content. They both went into testing having some pretty serious difficulties sleeping and came out of testing consistently getting a better night’s sleep—all after using the app for just a month. 

For both of them, Calm’s “sleep stories” were their favorite. Sleep stories are designed to be soothing, with a soft, lulling narration and content that’s, well, boring. To my testers, this sounded too good to be true—but they actually worked. My testers were proud to report that they never heard the ending of a single sleep story. And with over a hundred sleep stories to choose from, you are sure to find one that works for you. 

“Most of the stories range from 30 to 45 minutes, so I anticipated having to play multiple stories each night. To my surprise, I never heard the end of a story. I was not only impressed, but I ended up getting such good sleep over the course of the month.”

— Calm tester who came into testing with difficulty sleeping

I wish there was more free content—even though you can sign up for free, the vast majority of resources are behind a paywall. It is also odd that there is no monthly subscription available, as there is with every other app on this list (and with most apps). Even with the week-long free trial, some people might not want to jump right into an annual commitment.

• Costs: Free to download, $12 monthly subscription, $69 annual subscription ($5.75 per month)

• Services Offered: Breathing exercises

• Platforms: iOS, Android, web

• Free Trial: Yes, 7 days

Breathwork, or breathing exercises, are designed to calm your nervous system by controlling your breathing. When you are anxious or activated—think “fight or flight” mode—your breath naturally gets short and shallow. Actively slowing and deepening your breathing lets your body know that it’s safe to relax. This is where the Breathwrk app comes in—it teaches you to control your breathing to help you calm down, tackle anxiety, and get your body ready for sleep.

Breathwrk offers hundreds of breathing techniques to help with a wide range of issues and skills, including everything from improving sleep to learning meditation and mindfulness to boosting athletic performance and reducing addiction cravings. My tester particularly liked the app’s specificity—she could find exercises focused on just about anything, and especially appreciated that she had the freedom to do any exercise whenever she wanted or could set up a schedule with automated alerts to remind her to do a designated exercise at a certain time. This helped her build healthy routines quickly and improved her overall breathing, sleep habits, and anxiety by teaching relaxation skills through short exercises and classes.

My tester used Breathwrk to build a bedtime breathwork practice and use breathwork throughout the day to tackle her anxiety. And the best part? She was eventually able to continue to incorporate these skills into her everyday life without even using the app—meaning Breathwrk did its job.

“Overall, I felt that Breathwrk delivered on its promises to help me calm down, improve my breathing, learn more mindfulness techniques, and fall asleep quickly. While I haven’t tried every technique available in the app’s large library, I know that if I have a sugar craving, am prepping for my next 5k, feeling anxious, or am having nausea, I can turn to Breathwrk and find relief in as little as a minute. It’s incredibly practical and accessible, and I wasn’t expecting so many options and techniques.”

— Breathwrk tester who has been practicing breathwork for years

There’s not much to complain about with Breathwrk. One issue my tester ran into is that many of the classes and exercises feel similar, so you might end up doing the same thing over and over even when looking for something different.

• Costs: Free to download, $2.99 monthly subscription, $11.99 annual subscription

• Services Offered: Guided journaling, mood tracker, CBT exercises

• Platforms: iOS

• Free Trial: No

Worry Watch is an anxiety and mood tracker based on the tenets of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a therapeutic approach that teaches you to recognize negative and unhelpful thoughts and change your reactions to those thoughts. Designed to use CBT to treat anxiety specifically, Worry Watch’s goal is to teach you to see how your reactions to stressors are causing or exacerbating your anxiety, and help you respond to those stressors in a different way that, in turn, mitigates that anxiety. In fact, mental health apps like Worry Watch—especially ones that use approaches like CBT—have been proven to successfully combat mild to moderate issues like anxiety.

The main function of Worry Watch is a guided journal, designed to help you recognize and respond to anxious thoughts. At any point, my tester was able to rank her anxiety (how anxious she was feeling right then), record a “reason” for the anxiety (a trigger or cause), give a context for the reason, and identify any cognitive distortions (biased ways of thinking) she was experiencing that might be making her anxiety worse. Saved in the app, my tester could then go back and look at her journal entries to help her understand her reactions and tackle her anxiety differently the next time. This kind of self-reflection can help reduce anxiety not just moment-to-moment, but day-to-day as well. 

My tester, who is herself a therapist, tried out Worry Watch in order to get control of her anxiety, and she found this app to be simple, yet effective. And after using Worry Watch for just one month, my tester was better able to notice her thinking patterns and learn about the thoughts contributing to her anxiety.

“After completing the journal regularly, I started to notice patterns in my thinking and learn about ways that my thoughts were contributing to anxious distress. The cognitive distortions list brought my attention to the ways that I might be reacting to a bias rather than the reality of the situation. At the same time, there was always the option to indicate that yes, the outcome was as bad as anticipated, so the app does not force toxic positivity or invalidate objectively bad scenarios.” 

— Worry Watch tester who is a therapist

The free version of the app is extremely limited, offering only one journal entry per day. In addition, it's only available for Apple users, meaning Android users are out of luck.