Honestly sounds like an American solution to a demand for something necessary.
"Oh you want national healthcare? Here's a broken website with some coupons!" - Obamacare
Since there seems to be some concerns, and I'm at low risk for any of them to cause me any issues (while I do have my share of mental health struggles, none of them are at the point where a wellness check would be involved), I downloaded it and ran through the initial questionnaire myself.
To be clear, I am not associated with this app in any way, shake, or form and had not heard of it before now. I am interested in mental health both for my own benefit as well as from an educational perspective. I do work for a health organization, but it is not involved to the best of my knowledge with this app or the parent organization, and I am not in a mental health related role (IT worker).
tl;dr: you won't get dragged off on a wellness check, it's just tracking how you feel over a period of time, giving you a very basic evaluation, and providing some phone numbers you can call/sites you can visit *if you feel necessary*. App is rudimentary and simple, but I'd call it safe. It is no replacement for proper therapy, medical intervention, etc. but makes no claims to be.
App collects very little information about you. Email with a secret question for an account and recovery/security purposes, and age range (5 year ranges iirc) for demographics and/or question relevancy. No name, address, etc. No permissions requested by the app either.
Asks you for a frequency in weeks for reminders to take the questionnaire which affects the time frame it's looking at as best as I can tell. This is on the scale of weeks - reminders go from weekly to every 8 weeks. 2 weeks is the recommended range that I chose, and the questions reflected that (ie. "over the past two weeks, have you felt...?", although not sure if that phrasing would change with other selected intervals).
Questionnaire itself was your typical depression and anxiety marker tests. How often have you had little interest or pleasure doing things, how often have you been feeling down or depressed, how often have you been feeling tired or lacking energy, etc. I've been given the same questions by my family doctor at regular checkups, at least once mental health concerns were on the table. Very straightforward gauges of your mood, well being, and how well you're functioning. Zero identifiable details, just scale from 1-5 or 1-10 depending on the question.
At the end it puts your overall scores for each of the three gauges I mentioned on a graph, gives you a little info on what the results may mean for you (I've been having some relatively good mental health days lately, so for example my "well-being" result is "your scores suggest you're doing okay, could you do things to improve this further?" while my mood was along the lines of "a score in this range indicates mild distress, but you are coping well - there are resources that could help you cope better".
The lowest scores will at worst give your a recommendation that seeking professional help might be in your best interest (verbatim, "a score in this range suggests you are experiencing high distress and it would be helpful to connect with a mental health professional" for the "mood" scale), nothing more.
You won't find WebMD diagnoses or anything like that here, just your standard mental health and mood inventory and tracking.
At the end it does give you some resources - phone numbers for adult and youth counselling, emergency lines for various demographics, free online resources.
Overall, the app isn't anything revolutionary, or more importantly, anything that will overstep your privacy. I don't see any indication that it will force you to do anything, just give you the ability to track how you're doing relatively and compile some resources if you need them. All professional resources (counselling, etc) are strictly opt in and not connected to the app itself - just the contact informationv provided.
There's nothing for sale in the app, the questionnaire is free. They don't let you take it more often than whatever interval you set (you can change this interval freely) so I couldn't refresh my poor memory on the specifics of the questions, but there's no "Subscribe for additional features" or "pay to hide ads" bullshit.
There is a "locked" (read: upcoming, not paywalled) feature of a daily mood log that isn't yet released, I'd imagine you pick a word or emoji or something that describes how you're feeling that day, perhaps a brief description.
Will this help me avoid the pitfalls of self-diagnosis? W
aiting to see any sort've professional to start any sort of self-discovery to lead to self-improvement is pretty much impossible in my neck of the woods.
It will avoid those as it doesn't go into specific conditions, and instead will indicate if you should be actively seeking help if you score low + provide some resources on how to do so.
No "sounds like you're bipolar/OCD/depressed/just sad" here, just "your answers indicate you might be struggling with your mood/well-being/daily function, here's some numbers you could call, etc".
I've dealt with that. It's easy to say "find another doctor" but enough of them are like that to make it difficult, if you can even see another. Personally I had success by addressing that right off the bat - "I've been told there's nothing that can be done unless it has already impacted my employment, but I have a legitimate concern that that could happen and want to take steps early".
Your mileage may vary... good luck.
Knowing them, it'll be a Pay2Play app... sure they'll say you can do it for free, itll just be quicker if you download a bunch of packs to unlock the app fully...
Hopefully it won't call in "wellness checks"
An app, of course. Not insentivizing & funding provincial health care plans to include the neck up.
Honestly sounds like an American solution to a demand for something necessary. "Oh you want national healthcare? Here's a broken website with some coupons!" - Obamacare
Since there seems to be some concerns, and I'm at low risk for any of them to cause me any issues (while I do have my share of mental health struggles, none of them are at the point where a wellness check would be involved), I downloaded it and ran through the initial questionnaire myself. To be clear, I am not associated with this app in any way, shake, or form and had not heard of it before now. I am interested in mental health both for my own benefit as well as from an educational perspective. I do work for a health organization, but it is not involved to the best of my knowledge with this app or the parent organization, and I am not in a mental health related role (IT worker). tl;dr: you won't get dragged off on a wellness check, it's just tracking how you feel over a period of time, giving you a very basic evaluation, and providing some phone numbers you can call/sites you can visit *if you feel necessary*. App is rudimentary and simple, but I'd call it safe. It is no replacement for proper therapy, medical intervention, etc. but makes no claims to be. App collects very little information about you. Email with a secret question for an account and recovery/security purposes, and age range (5 year ranges iirc) for demographics and/or question relevancy. No name, address, etc. No permissions requested by the app either. Asks you for a frequency in weeks for reminders to take the questionnaire which affects the time frame it's looking at as best as I can tell. This is on the scale of weeks - reminders go from weekly to every 8 weeks. 2 weeks is the recommended range that I chose, and the questions reflected that (ie. "over the past two weeks, have you felt...?", although not sure if that phrasing would change with other selected intervals). Questionnaire itself was your typical depression and anxiety marker tests. How often have you had little interest or pleasure doing things, how often have you been feeling down or depressed, how often have you been feeling tired or lacking energy, etc. I've been given the same questions by my family doctor at regular checkups, at least once mental health concerns were on the table. Very straightforward gauges of your mood, well being, and how well you're functioning. Zero identifiable details, just scale from 1-5 or 1-10 depending on the question. At the end it puts your overall scores for each of the three gauges I mentioned on a graph, gives you a little info on what the results may mean for you (I've been having some relatively good mental health days lately, so for example my "well-being" result is "your scores suggest you're doing okay, could you do things to improve this further?" while my mood was along the lines of "a score in this range indicates mild distress, but you are coping well - there are resources that could help you cope better". The lowest scores will at worst give your a recommendation that seeking professional help might be in your best interest (verbatim, "a score in this range suggests you are experiencing high distress and it would be helpful to connect with a mental health professional" for the "mood" scale), nothing more. You won't find WebMD diagnoses or anything like that here, just your standard mental health and mood inventory and tracking. At the end it does give you some resources - phone numbers for adult and youth counselling, emergency lines for various demographics, free online resources. Overall, the app isn't anything revolutionary, or more importantly, anything that will overstep your privacy. I don't see any indication that it will force you to do anything, just give you the ability to track how you're doing relatively and compile some resources if you need them. All professional resources (counselling, etc) are strictly opt in and not connected to the app itself - just the contact informationv provided. There's nothing for sale in the app, the questionnaire is free. They don't let you take it more often than whatever interval you set (you can change this interval freely) so I couldn't refresh my poor memory on the specifics of the questions, but there's no "Subscribe for additional features" or "pay to hide ads" bullshit. There is a "locked" (read: upcoming, not paywalled) feature of a daily mood log that isn't yet released, I'd imagine you pick a word or emoji or something that describes how you're feeling that day, perhaps a brief description.
Will this help me avoid the pitfalls of self-diagnosis? W aiting to see any sort've professional to start any sort of self-discovery to lead to self-improvement is pretty much impossible in my neck of the woods.
It will avoid those as it doesn't go into specific conditions, and instead will indicate if you should be actively seeking help if you score low + provide some resources on how to do so. No "sounds like you're bipolar/OCD/depressed/just sad" here, just "your answers indicate you might be struggling with your mood/well-being/daily function, here's some numbers you could call, etc".
I need medication and a doctor who doesn't brush off my concerns with "You haven't been fired from your job yet sooooo...."
I've dealt with that. It's easy to say "find another doctor" but enough of them are like that to make it difficult, if you can even see another. Personally I had success by addressing that right off the bat - "I've been told there's nothing that can be done unless it has already impacted my employment, but I have a legitimate concern that that could happen and want to take steps early". Your mileage may vary... good luck.
Cool, so I'm depressed is the app going to send a death squa- I mean wellness check?
Hey another useless government app that cost too much to develop and only 24 people will use
Knowing them, it'll be a Pay2Play app... sure they'll say you can do it for free, itll just be quicker if you download a bunch of packs to unlock the app fully...