Developing an app for anxiety

[Phil T]

Hello
I am a psychologist at an English university and would value your thoughts on a current project. Together with colleagues in the computer science department we are developing a mobile phone app to provide self-help for anxiety.  As we are intending it initially for student use, we anticipate that panic, generalised anxiety and social anxiety will be common, although we are not intending to offer diagnoses.
Users will be able to profile and record their anxiety in terms of emotion, thoughts, physical symptoms and avoidance tendencies.  They will be offered information and guidance about the limitations of this sort of support and a range of self-help options to use.
I have two questions arising from this design:
What self-help interventions for anxiety would you recommend to be delivered on a mobile phone app?
Beyond trial-and-error, what principles, theory or evidence might be offered to guide users in their choice of self-help options?
Best wishes,
Phil Topham

[SWM]

This is a great idea, i have been considering if it would be feasible for me to do something similar myself. Unfortunately i don't have the resources to commit to developing it.

Psycho-education is the simplest and easiest to deliver form of self help and should be a part of treatment for all of the disorders you mentioned.  Cognitive restructuring can be delivered via self help and would be applicable to all of thosee specific disorders.
with panic and social phobia simple behavioural experiments would be easy to deliver through self help.
With GAD worry logs and problem solving are straight forward interventions.

Lots of treatments for anxiety fall in to the trap of offering relaxation. relaxation can become a form of safety behaviour that if used inappropriately can reinforce maladaptive core beliefs. Relaxation would be easy to implement in an app but would have poor efficacy.

good luck with this project and please keep us informaed how things are going with it.

 

[Phil T]

Thanks for that support and for reminding me about experiments and worry logs in particular.  There is probably a limit to what you can usefully provide on a phone app and we will be doing user trials as we go along.
PT

[Phil T]

Thanks for this.  I understand what you're saying about the relationship between anxiety and anger - both reactions to threat - but I didn't understand the last bit about not needing the psychology of anxiety.

[SWM]

@PhilT
You will be wanting to stick with evidence based psychology rather than some of the more "alternative" views.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion here but some opinions are best to be thought of as just an opinion.

[SWM]

@PhilT
You will be wanting to stick with evidence based psychology rather than some of the more "alternative" views.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion here but some opinions are best to be thought of as just an opinion.

Thought has the option to belittle anything. That's why it's addictive.

you find thought addictive because it has the option to belittle things? what other options do you have for your thoughts other than belittling things? maybe those options would free you from that addiction.

It's an idea that I write from the position of having transcended thought,

all of your posts are a concoction of your own thoughts. few if any of these posts are rational or logical. does transcending thought mean that you have become mindless?

[SWM]

Thought has the option to belittle anything. That's why it's addictive.

you find thought addictive because it has the option to belittle things? what other options do you have for your thoughts other than belittling things? maybe those options would free you from that addiction.

It's an idea that I write from the position of having transcended thought,

all of your posts are a concoction of your own thoughts. few if any of these posts are rational or logical. does transcending thought mean that you have become mindless?

That last is a common question. Odd for a psychologist, of course, who has found out through direct experiment that the conscious barely exists to begin with. It's rather along for the ride, taking credit to obfuscate where it's due.

you imply that your consciousness has no function (being that it is along for the ride) but is credited with obfuscating. do you mean that your mind is obfuscating what you directly experience? i call this filtering, the technical term is cognitive bias.

something exists or does not exist; that is one of the standard principles of logic. to say consciousness barely exists is a form of cognitive bias, (you are filtering something from your experience). when you are filtering your reality you are deceiving yourself. there is a possibility that this filtering is unconscious but is accessible to conscious awareness. how would you know if you were unconsciously filtering your experience?

It's not uncommon egotism to assume that something you can't make sense of must be irrational. Even when given it as a text-book.

rationality is the application of reason to the conclusions you make. when i am saying you are irrational i am not saying that i do not understand you or cannot make sense of what you write, i understand the sentences as you write them within standard definitions and grammatical structure of language. if it was just myself that reads your posts as irrational then i might question if it is my ego decieving me, but it is not just me therefore it is not me at all and I would be better to look at the other options as to where my perception of your irrationality is coming from.

when i am saying you are irrational i am saying you are not applying reasoning to your conclusions. this could possibly be a consequence of your lacking thoughtfulness. is transcending thought equivalent to transcending reasoning. when i look at the conclusions that you make i can see that there is a lack of thorough reasoning. comments such as "i have transcended thought" which statement is itself the expression of a thought, while your posts are a collection of your own thoughts and opinions which even make references to thinking and other cognitive processes is a simple example of you not applying reasoning to your conclusion and therefore appearing irrational.

Imagine, if you will, having to slow down the way you approach something. What would you have to leave out? Who would you have to cut out? Think a guy who habituates the gay-clubs, for example. How many hours a week? How many drinks? how many groggy starts to the days?

what was the purpose of asking these questions? in what way are they relevant to me or to the reader of this topic? 
I have noticed in other posts that you have spoken out of context about homosexuality, drunkenness and also a few out of context mentions of children and child abuse. is there something relevant to you personally in such comments? are you conscious/mindful of these comments? are they thoughtless ramblings?

[Phil T]

I'm afraid that most of these replies are not at all helpful to my original enquiry about developing an app for anxiety.  If this is representative of the general of discussion I would prefer to unsubscribe from this forum, if only I could find out how.

[SWM]

would you like me to unsubscribe you?

[Phil T]

Yes please and sorry it didn't work out.

[SWM]

just to say that anxiety and depression are really simple to treat. they respond very well to simple interventions such as behavioural experiments and cognitive restructuring. psycho-education is simple effective and easy to administer in many forms ie audio, video or text. this could also be interactive. if you haven't already you should look at the work of Dr Chris Williams over at LLTTF.com.

i will delete your account after 24 hours you will no longer receive updates but you will no longer be able to access or use the forum.
freedom of speech is the nature of forums.

[SWM]

or i could arrange so that you do not receive notification of every post. in fact you can do this yourself in profile >notifications.

[Phil T]

Yes please do unsubscribe me. 
 

[hard science]

You're affecting not to be thinking of things to posit which are intended to conceal what the thinker of these things wants to accomplish, even though when you say "reason" you mean, when it is social reasoning, how to do just that. It would be irrational, in your private judgement, to express something that would show an observer what is hiding in your head.

And if you are really amateurish you actually believe that there is a sincere version of social reasoning if you just happened to feel like being sincere. So to be rid of duplicity, in this amateurish theory, doesn't necessitate the ending of thought and thinker.

[SWM]

You're affecting not to be thinking of things to posit which are intended to conceal what the thinker of these things wants to accomplish, even though when you say "reason" you mean, when it is social reasoning, how to do just that.

social reasoning is a function of child development i am not talking about social reasoning i am talking of logic, critical thinking, rationailty. i am saying you are lacking it and if you were to apply it to your own comments you would see some of the faulty conclusions you come to.

It would be irrational, in your private judgement, to express something that would show an observer what is hiding in your head.

you say "your" as though reference to me but you measure me in your own mind. these are your thoughts about my judgement. your thoughts about me are not a measure of my mind they are a measure of your own mind. to believe that you have a measure of my judgement or anything in my mind is irrational, failing to engage reasoning.