Mental Health App Development: An Expert Guide for 2024

Mental health issues are on the rise worldwide. In 2021, nearly 23% of U.S. adults had a mental health condition, and by 2023, 46% of EU citizens reported experiencing emotional or psychosocial challenges.

This growing need has fueled the mental health app market, which was valued at around USD 6.1 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a rate of 17.6% annually from 2024 to 2032.

Compared to traditional therapy, mental health applications offer affordable and convenient support for managing stress and anxiety. For individuals with more serious conditions, these apps can complement therapy by encouraging regular self-monitoring and small, consistent steps towards recovery.

In this article, we explore the essentials of mental health app development in 2024. We discuss key market niches, essential app features, and monetization strategies. By the end, you’ll have a step-by-step guide for creating a mental health app, based on our experience in the field.

Let’s dive in!

Benefits of mental health apps

The consistent demand for mental health apps is driven by the tangible benefits they offer users:

• Accessibility. Almost half of Americans live in a mental health workforce shortage area. Looking for a high-quality therapist can take months. A mental health app provides quick access to mental health help for a small fraction of cost. 
• Affordability. The average cost of in-person therapy in the U.S ranges between $100-$200 per session. Online therapy apps offer significantly more affordable therapy sessions, while self-help apps charge no more than $20-$30 per month. 
• Instant help. Anxiety or panic attacks can happen anytime. Mental health apps provide instant access to meditations, affirmations, and useful advice. This helps to manage mental health symptoms in-between therapy sessions.
• Consistency. Mental health recovery involves consistent changes in thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Mental health apps provide easy access to CBT tools, mood trackers, and other helpful features. By reminding users to use those tools on a daily basis, mental health apps help people build healthy habits and make consistent progress. 

Types of mental health apps

Mental health app market is diverse and has a large number of niches. For convenience, we can distinguish three general types of mental health apps. 

• Therapy apps. Apps for people who are looking for online therapy sessions with psychologists or psychiatrists. 
• Mental disorder treatment apps. Apps for people who need help in managing the symptoms of a mental health disorder. Each app is focused on one or two specific disorders, such as depression, anxiety, OCD, schizophrenia, addiction, eating disorders, or others. 
• Mood trackers and meditation/mindfulness apps. Apps for people who are looking to relieve stress, balance their mood, improve focus, and boost the general sense of well-being. 

Let’s talk about each type in more detail. 

Therapy apps

Therapy apps focus on providing therapy services for users. Users can choose a therapist, schedule regular online appointments, and communicate with them in-between sessions via texts, live chat, or audio and video calls. 

Compared to traditional in-person therapy, therapy apps are more affordable and offer more flexibility. Due to the shortage of therapists in the US and Europe and high therapy costs, these apps are becoming an attractive option for many. Remote therapy can also be easier to handle for people with certain disorders, such as social anxiety disorder.

Key market players of this category include: 

• BetterHelp. This app offers individual therapy sessions in the US and other countries. Pricing differs depending on location and demand, but the app also offers financial aid for certain categories of users. The app does not provide medication management services and psychiatric help. 
• TalkSpace. This app offers individual therapy, couples therapy, and teen counseling. It also accepts insurance in the US and offers psychiatric help, as well as medication management services. 

Mental illness apps

Mental disorder treatment apps focus on treating one or several mental health disorders. 

• Depression. In 2024, FDA approved the app Rejoyn as a non-drug treatment for major depressive disorders. This app is only available as a prescription and is used in combination with regular therapy. Other apps for managing depressive symptoms include TalkLife, a community support network, Youper, a conversational AI bot, and What’s up – a CBT-based app that helps patients with depression build healthier thought and action patterns.
• OCD. Apps for people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder offer live therapy sessions and helpful exercises for symptom management. The most popular app for OCD treatment is NOCD – an app that offers online therapy sessions. Another popular solution is OCD.app, offering CBT tools, exercises, and educational content about OCD. 
• Eating disorders. Apps designed for individuals dealing with bulimia, anorexia, and binge eating provide valuable tools such as journaling features, healthy meal plans, and coping techniques. For example, InsideOut, developed by Apiko, enables users to track their thoughts and emotions, monitor food intake, and receive feedback from mental health professionals.  
• Anxiety disorders. Anxiety disorders are the most widespread mental health disorders in the US and Europe. Many mental health apps incorporate features designed for anxiety relief. For example, apps like Headspace, Calm, and Aura include anti-anxiety guided meditations, while Breathwrk focuses on breathwork techniques.
• PTSD. U.S Department of Veterans Affairs offers a range of applications helping to manage PTSD symptoms, particularly among soldiers. PTSD Coach, for instance, provides self-assessment tests, information on professional care, and a range of tools for management of PTSD symptoms.
• Addictions. Apps for people recovering from substance abuse help users track their recovery while staying motivated and supported. I am Sober is a leading app in this category. The app allows users to calculate how much money they saved, track recovery milestones, and share stories with others. 

Meditation and mindfulness apps

According to the 2022 American Psychological Association survey, 34% of U.S adults feel that stress is completely overwhelming for them on most days. In addition, 21% of adults often experience forgetfulness and 20% have difficulties concentrating. 

These grim statistics underscore a need for apps focusing on stress relief, concentration, and mindfulness. Meditation apps provide just that – and the demand is growing fast. The meditation app market size is forecasted to double by 2029, and there are no signs of slowdown. 

The market leaders in this highly popular category include: 

• Headspace. Founded by a Buddhist monk, the app offers guided meditations to relieve stress, improve sleep, and become more mindful. 
• Calm. This app offers different types of content designed to help users calm down and sleep better, including soundscapes, soothing music, guided meditations, and narrated stories. Many of the meditations and stories are also narrated by famous voice actors and meditation teachers. 
• Happify. Happify is designed to help people cope with stress and change patterns of negative thinking. It uses quizzes, games, guided meditations, and mindfulness techniques to help users calm down and build a positive mindset. 

Overall, the competition in the most popular niches is intense. Nevertheless, there are many opportunities to stand out in the market by providing unique features and smooth user experience. Let’s discuss which features are a must in a mental health app. 

Must-have mental health app features

Fast and intuitive onboarding

Many users abandon apps after just one use because of a frustrating or insufficient onboarding. Intuitive onboarding is even more crucial for mental health app design. 

Frustrating onboarding can jeopardize user experience of an app that is supposed to help with relaxation and calmness. For example, this review of Happify on Verywellmind criticizes the app’s onboarding bot, Taylor:

Many mental health apps offer extended onboarding to provide a personalized experience – but this is a double-edged sword. An overly long onboarding can irritate and turn off potential users, so testing onboarding screens before launching the app is highly recommended. 

Self-monitoring features

Self-monitoring features are necessary for almost all types of mental health applications. 

You can include: 

• Mental health tests. Various psychological tests to assess the users’ mental health condition and provide appropriate recommendations. 
• Mood and stress tracking.  Questionnaires help users gain insight into their emotions by allowing them to choose colors that represent their mood, select emojis, or rate the intensity of their feelings on a scale from 1 to 10. 
• Thought tracking. Thought trackers for noticing and changing unhelpful thinking patterns. 
• Journaling. Structured journaling prompts to help users reflect on specific questions about their feelings and mental health progress. 
• Dashboards. Colorful dashboards showing the users’ progress across a range of indicators to help users keep track of their condition. 

Educational content

A mental health app should contain various types of educational video and audio content. 

• Expert articles and self-help guides. Educational articles and guides on relevant mental health topics provide users with concise and helpful information on their problems. 
• Video content. Video tutorials and lessons, expert discussions, and other video content is engaging and can improve accessibility and attractiveness of your app.  
• Audio content. Guided meditations, soundscapes, relaxing music, and other types of audio content are often the key elements of mental health applications. 

The most popular applications provide all three types of content, but the priority is often given to visual and audio content, since it tends to be easier to perceive and more engaging. 

Supportive content

Users struggling with mental health need to feel supported and encouraged when using your application. Some ways in which your app can provide support for users include: 

• Affirmations. Positive affirmations can help users cheer up and think more positively. These can be tailored to the user’s goals and emotional state. 
• Positive stories. Positive stories of other users can provide users with a motivational boost to continue their journey to better mental health. 
• Community support. Anonymized forums and chats can help users feel less alone and get useful advice from others suffering from the same mental health issues. 

Notifications and reminders

Reminders and notifications help users create a mental health routine and stimulate them to return to the app. 

For example, InsideOut sends notifications when users suffering from eating disorders have to describe what they’ve eaten as well as their feelings and behaviors associated with the last food intake. A mental health application can also send notifications when users need to take medications or before a scheduled activity, such as therapy session or a meditation. 

It’s important to avoid going overboard with notifications. Excessively frequent notifications are likely to irritate and alienate users. Let your users decide by themselves the frequency and type of notifications they want to receive. 

Communication with clinicians

This is most relevant for therapy applications, but your app can include some form of communication with clinicians even if online therapy is not the focus of your solution. 

Typically, users can communicate with clinicians using different channels: 

• Video appointments with clinicians. 
• Audio and video calls. 
• Text chat. 
• Clinicians’ commentaries on patients’ progress. 

Games and exercises

Games and exercises can help users calm down, reduce anxiety, and improve attention and focus. 

• Breathing exercises. Timed breathing practices (e.g., 4-7-8 breathing) can help users calm the mind and body.
• Mindfulness games. Interactive tasks can encourage users to focus on the present moment. For instance, you can ask users to identify and label emotions or engage the senses to become grounded in the present moment. 
• Memory and attention games. You can add puzzles, card-matching, or brain-training games designed to improve cognitive functioning. This can help reduce anxiety and improve focus.
• Problem-solving tasks. Scenario-based challenges can promote resilience by encouraging users to think through solutions to stress-inducing problems.

AI features

As of 2024, conversational AI chatbots are the most common type of AI implementation in mental health applications. These bots are trained on mental health sources to respond to users’ anxieties and feelings in a supportive and helpful manner. Usually, they offer various kinds of CBT techniques, meditations, and mindfulness prompts to help users deal with their issues. 

Newcomers to the market of AI-based mental health solutions have a high chance of success, because most competitors suffer from various shortcomings. AI software is new, and mental health chatbots are often trained poorly and give insufficient or incorrect answers.  

At Apiko, we have extensive experience in training AI chatbots to respond accurately and appropriately. With our AI development services, you can be sure that your AI-driven mental health solution provides reliable support and resources tailored to individual users' needs.  

Monetization strategies for mental health apps

Mental health apps typically use common monetization strategies, such as: 

• Freemium
• Subscription model
• In-app purchases
• In-app ads

Most mental health apps follow a freemium subscription-based monetization model. For example, Calm, I am Sober, and Headspace offer a limited free version. To get access to most features, users need to purchase a monthly, yearly, or family premium subscription plan. I am Sober also offers small in-app purchases. 

Ad-based monetization model is uncommon in mental health apps, though ad integration is possible if ads are appropriate and integrated carefully. 

Due to the tight competition, some mental health apps fail to achieve success.  Let’s discuss how to create a mental health app that effectively attracts and retains users. 

How to develop a mental health app

A successful mental health app stems from a deep understanding of the market, top-tier software development, and effective management. Let’s go through it step-by-step. 

Conduct market research

Many mental health app niches already have strong players. To reach success, your app has to offer something that is more attractive compared to the established apps. 

Before starting to work on the application itself, you need to reach clarity on: 

• The target audience of the app. Who is your target audience? What are their age, gender, mental health condition, country of residence? What problem do they want to solve by using your app?
• Competitor research. Study your competition – download the apps of your competitors, use them, and note the features. Take a look at customers’ reviews and notice what the customers are happy and unhappy with. 
• Expert opinion. Read expert market reviews and opinions on new developments in the mental health market. Notice emerging niches and growing trends. 

This will help you determine the general focus of your application and its key features. 

Contact the development team

After you have conducted market research, you’ll need to bring your idea to reality. 

You will need a team of mental health app developers, designers, and managers to create a functional, high-quality application. Typically, businesses either hire an in-house team or outsource the development work. If you opt for an outsource team, pay attention to the customer reviews and the provider’s experience in developing healthcare applications. 

Start the discovery phase

After you have contacted the software development company and signed a contract, the team working with you will conduct a series of meetings to prepare for the development process. At Apiko, the deliverables of the discovery phase include: 

• Product vision and business goals. Defining the long-term user problem that the product aims to solve, and establishing clear, concrete goals to achieve.
• Product Backlog. Creating a prioritized list of the required functionality based on the product roadmap. This list will guide the development team throughout the software development process.
• Architecture plan: Making key decisions regarding the overall structure and behavior of the system.
• Non-functional requirements: Specifying critical system attributes and performance metrics, including security, reliability, scalability, usability, and maintainability. 
• DevOps plan: Outlining the objectives and responsibilities of the DevOps team, specifying their role and activities during project development.
• Wireframes of key user flows. Developing wireframes that illustrate page layouts and represent simplified user interactions within the software.

Build an MVP

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the most basic version of a product, designed with only the essential features needed to operate. Its primary function is to allow the business to collect valuable feedback and insights into user behavior. 

MVP  enables companies to assess product-market fit early in the development process. MVP development allows businesses to validate core assumptions about their product, gather real-world user input, and make data-driven decisions about what to prioritize in future development stages. 

Building an MVP is not an obligatory phase of product development. For example, a solution for internal use may not need an MVP at all. However, an MVP is a highly recommended phase for mental health apps intended for the consumer market. 

Proceed with the development phase

During the development phase, the members of your team separate the project into software modules and write the code that creates the product. By following the architectural requirements, developers write the code in an agreed-upon language to make the fully-fledged product that performs all the necessary functions. 

Test the application

After the application is ready, it should be thoroughly tested by QA specialists to avoid any bugs and lags. QA specialists will use different types of testing to check whether all the processes in the app work as expected. These include: 

• Functional testing. Functional testing involves testing each user flow to check that all features work properly. 
• Interruption testing. This type of testing checks whether an app can respond to interruptions without failures or anomalies. 
• Localization testing. In case the app has special features for different locations, this testing checks whether the features are properly activated in those locations. 
• Memory leak testing. This type of testing checks whether the app can function well on devices with different memory capacities. 
• Usability testing. This type of testing checks the intuitiveness and ease of use of the interface. 
• Performance testing. Performance tests put pressure on the application to make sure that it functions well under suboptimal conditions. 

Release and update

After thorough testing, you can release your app and wait for the feedback of your customers! It is recommended to keep the same team of developers to provide regular updates and maintenance to your application. 

Mental health app development case study: InsideOut

InsideOut Institute is an Australian research institute specializing in treatment of eating disorders. 

Together with InsideOut, Apiko team developed a self-monitoring mobile app for eating disorder recovery that replaced traditional paper tracking. The app allows users to log their food, thoughts, and behaviors. To keep patients on track, itt sends push notifications as reminders for meals and key moments. Under the supervision of a health professional, users can monitor their recovery journey and receive real-time feedback through a one-way messaging feature. 

Key Features:

1. Food Tracking: Logging meals, add notes, and set meal reminders.
2. Thought Monitoring: Recording unhelpful thoughts, rating distress, and identifying cognitive distortions.
3. Behavior Tracking: Logging behaviors (e.g., binge eating), triggers, and feelings.
4. Food Plan: Creating meal plans with notifications.
5. Health Professional Supervision: Professionals can view progress and leave feedback.
6. Progress Tracking: Filtering entries, viewing trends, and gaining insights.
7. Reminders: Receiving notifications for meals and tasks via push, phone, or email.

Conclusions

Mental health app development is a complex process that involves efficient coordination of business leaders, developers, managers, and designers. From brainstorming ideas to  product release, developing a mental health app requires expertise and experience. 

At Apiko, we offer mental health app development services of any complexity. Our experience in mental health app development enables us to build powerful and cost-effective applications that help users recover from mental health disorders. 

If you have a mental health app idea in mind, don’t hesitate to reach out!