10 Best Mental Health and Wellbeing Apps for Kids

Contain Your Brain is developed in conjunction with a clinical psychologist to help its users deal with worry, anxiety, and stress. It uses a simple concept of set, sort, and solve and provides the support to implement it. 

The app provides strategies for dealing with each category of worry, including those you must accept rather than resolve. It also helps you structure when you deal with those worries by organising time to set aside to focus on them.

Teachers and parents may find it useful for themselves but also to help their kids deal with problems.

Devices: iPhone, iPad and Android

MindShift app is based on to help young adults cope with anxiety, by acting as a portable coach that guides users through challenging situations. Designed in collaboration with Anxiety Canada, this app teaches users how to relax and helps them identify active steps to directly face and take charge of their anxiety.

The app provides a variety of methods for young people to respond to anxiety including; developing their knowledge of anxiety and symptoms, engaging in relaxation tasks, evaluating their level of anxiety in particular situations, developing realistic thinking patterns and changing behaviour. 

Specific tools help users tackle issues such as improving their sleep quality, dealing with perfectionism, and handling conflict. These tools address everyday situations that contribute to increased levels of anxiety, in order to help users change their overall relationship with anxiety. The goal is to help young people learn and practice anxiety coping skills.

Devices: iPhone, iPad and Android

Headspace: Guided Meditations and Mindfulness takes a calm, relaxed approach to bringing calm relaxation into the lives of adults and kids. Headspace app, aims to keep children “calm and focused” through short meditation exercises.

The app will help kids fall asleep and wake up peacefully. It uses common meditation techniques like becoming aware of environmental sounds, breath awareness, breath counting, and more. Kids can learn the basics of meditation and mindfulness. Kids can follow the instructions and are reminded by the app to meditate each day. They can develop the habit of making time for personal growth and self-reflection in different situations, such as bedtime and waking up. It is also being used by mental health professionals and licensed therapists in medical sector.

Devices: iPhone, iPad and Android

Smiling Mind is designed to help people pressure, stress, and challenges of daily life. This app has a fantastic section on Mindfulness in the Classroom. An especially good choice for the younger users out there, as it was created specifically with students in mind. Smiling Mind offers programs for a variety of age groups, including 7-9, 10-12, 13-15, 16-18 and adults. The app has an easy-to-use interface for keeping track of your progress over time, both in terms of how many sessions you complete and how your emotions change.

Devices: iPhone, iPad and Android

Breathe, Think, and Do with Sesame is a free app that helps kids learn to deal with frustrating situations using the "breathe, think, do" method. They'll learn to take long, deep belly breaths to calm down, think of a few strategies to handle the problem, and then do those things. They'll develop resilience as they overcome frustrations and challenges on their own.

Even young children aged two to five can become more aware of their own emotions. Breathe, Think, Do features your child’s favourite Sesame Street characters to help teach them skills such as problem-solving, self-control, planning and perseverance.

Devices: iPhone, iPad and Android

Calm is the perfect meditation app for beginners, but also includes hundreds of programs for intermediate and advanced users. Guided meditation sessions are available in lengths of 3, 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 minutes so you can choose the perfect length to fit with your schedule.

Enjoy 100+ guided meditations to help you manage anxiety, lower stress and sleep better. Sleep Stories are soothing tales read by well-known voices to help people unwind and fall into a deep sleep each evening. Also enjoy 10 minute guided video lessons on mindful movement and gentle stretching.

Devices: iPhone, iPad and Android

Mindful Powers is one the best mindfulness app aimed at children aged between 7 and 10. The technique of mindfulness has been very positively received by many of those who have taken the time to learn and practice it. Adults have embraced mindfulness apps to aid their learning and practice. 

The contents of this app in both presentation and method are well suited to the target age group. The child-friendly graphics have a dreamy quality and the audio is something of an ethereal soundscape. Guided stories lead children towards calmness and focus while a timer option helps them to apply what they have learned to real life.

Devices: iPhone, iPad and Android

Anxiety, fear, and stress can lead to sleeplessness. Tiredness can amplify negative emotions. A vicious circle can form.  If your child is a nighttime worrier kept from sleep by an unquiet mind, consider Children's Bedtime Meditations for Sleep & Calm.

This app is free and comes with six meditations that can be added to with in-app purchases. The gentle stories, soothing music and soft sounds are designed to calm and distract the mind so that children can drift off to sleep naturally. Try it once, for free, and see how it works. There's nothing to lose and a good night's sleep to gain.

Devices: iPhone, iPad and Android

There are many different things than can impact a child's mental health. Even the most attentive parents might not be fully aware of any anxieties or problems that their children might have.

Made and supported by the charity Childline, For Me provides help and guidance for those that need it, both within the app and through easy connection to a counsellor. This is a free app, so encourage your child to have it on their device. That way, if ever they do need help, they have a starting point and it is one that has always been there, not one that has been pushed on to them because of their problems. Even if they do not need it for themselves, it might help them support a friend who does.

Devices: iPhone, iPad

What do you get when a game developer works with an occupational therapist? Zones of Regulation, it seems. The game developer's sense of style and fun engage children with this app while the occupational therapist's influence guides children towards better control of their emotions.

Children identify the coloured 'zone' that they are in which corresponds to different groups of emotions. For example, anger is in the red and sadness in the blue. The app then guides children through these emotions and how to deal with them. The intention is to take children through the negative emotions into the calm and content ones. There are not many apps that link a child's love of games with mental wellbeing so this is one to check out.

Devices: iPhone, iPad and Android