Apple commits to mental health with tracking on Watch and iPhone

1 year ago 79

For those of us strugglign with mental health, Apple has had an obvious gap in its line-up: Mood tracking and figuring out what the correlation is between your depression and anxiety and other metrics, and other health measurements, including exercise and sleep etc.

In its WWDC 2023 keynote, Apple opens the door to far deeper care when it comes to mental health – suggesting that the company believes that mental health is as important as physical health, and helping its users to draw connections to the two.

Apple’s new features invite users to draw parallels between mental health and potential causes for psychological wobbles. Image Credit: Apple.

Under the auspice of ‘you can’t improve what you don’t measure,’ it invites users to reflect on their state of mind, and logging and tracking it for future observation. Mental health tracking can be done on the Apple Watch by using the digital crown to scroll through a range of emotions. It also invites users to identify what is making them feel a particular way – whether work travel is making you twitchy, family stressors are getting your heartrate up, or relationships are getting you down.

The company also adds standardized assessments for anxiety and depression (self-assessed appetite, energy, and the amount of fidgeting users are doing, among other things) and reports users risk for the ailments. The keynote suggests that the app will help users understand if they need to talk to someone, such as a doctor or therapist, and it’s possible to share the reports with care providers, and suggests helpful articles and resources.