How To Create The Best Mental Health App From Scratch?
People are making mental health apps as their new friends. These apps are allowing them to remove stress and anxiety. At present, the mental app development sector is growing impressively. As per Deloitte Insights Report 2022, the global spending on mental health mobile apps is expected to touch $500 million with a 32% growth speed.
Especially in the USA, people are looking for the best mental apps that provide them great features for mediation, stress-relieving, Yoga practice, and more.
Moodfit, MoodMission, Talkspace, Calm, Headspace are the popular mental health apps that are making millions of revenue. These apps have become successful because they have really good features that help people cope with their stress, anxiety, depression and make their mind happy.
But developing a mental health app that helps people requires a smart app development strategy. It must have some essential features and a specific goal. And this blog would tell you how to create the best mental health app from scratch. If you have a vision to help people live a better mental health life, know how you can make it possible easily.
How to Create a Mental Health App?
1. Decide the Type of Mental Health App
As we discussed above, mental health app development is a broad domain. You need to determine for which specific area in mental health you are going to build your app. Whether you want to develop a mental health app that helps people relieve stress, anxiety, and depression, or one mediation app for overall mental health wellness.
In every case, you need to deeply understand the problems that people suffer, and then accordingly you should research what type of app you should create. Here are the types of mental health apps to include in your project:
- Mental Disorder
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Eating Disorder
- Depression and Anxiety
- Meditation Applications
- Self Improvement
- Stress and Anxiety Relief
2. Research Your Customer
Mental health is a sensitive area. It directly affects people’s health and their mood. Thus, you should research who your customer is. Research your audience and gather accurate information that is relevant to solving mental health issues. Ensure your mobile app development company incorporates the two key aspects while designing your app architecture and features list.
- What exactly is a user’s mental health problem?
- How will it help the end-user?
- Does the app have rich content?
3. Decide the Features
Mental health apps require some specific features to build. If you are developing a native app, you will need to code the app separately for each platform Android and iOS. Or if you want to create a cross-platform app, you should go with Flutter app development. You should try to take help from a dedicated healthcare app development company that knows what exact features work in this field.
Here, I recommend you first conduct competitor research and see closely what features most famous mental health apps have? How do these apps solve users’ problems? What do people expect from a mental health mobile application?
To help you with this, here we have listed the list of features for mental health apps to include:
- User profile
- Notifications
- Self-monitoring
- Audio and Video calling
- Gamification
- Sharing
- Communities and group chat
- Emergency feature
- Thought Diary
- On-Demand Video/Audio Content
- Urgent Counseling Assistance
- Meditation & Other Mental Activities
- Forums & Group Chats
- Push-Notifications
4. Choose the Right Tech Stack
Choose the tech stack that supports you in developing all required features. There are many frameworks and technologies available; it might be challenging to pick up the right one. Therefore, you should best Flutter app developers that can guide you intelligently in setting up the tech stack for your mental app development.
- Project management tools- Zoho Projects, Kissflow Project
- Prototyping- Balsamiq, Figma
- UX design-Figma, AdobeXD, InVision Studio
- Hosting- AWS, Google, Azure
- Database- MySQL
- Frontend- React Native, Flutter
5. Ensure Your App HIPAA and GDPR Compliant?
To provide mental health solutions through a mobile app, you need to collect users’ health-related or sensitive information which is very personal to a user. And this is a critical process. Here, you need to keep note that each country has some data collection regulations like Europe has GDPR policy for user data regulation.
Similarly in the USA, if you are serving any healthcare-related merits through a mobile application, then you need to ensure your app is compliant with HIPAA policy. Without it, your app would not be permitted to be launched. Therefore, it is highly critical that your mental health app developer is aware of the current complaints and data regulation policies.
- Canada- PIPEDA
- USA- HIPAA,
- European UNion- GDPR
- UK- Data Protection Act
6. Develop and Release
Once you have developed the app, take it through multiple phases of app testing and quality assurance. Make sure there is no bug in the code which causes any technical or permanence error. Hence, you should use advanced mobile app testing tools and software to ensure your app meets all parameters. And when the app is full-functional, go ahead and release it.
How Much Does It Cost to Create a Mental Health App?
The cost of building a mental health app depends on multiple factors. What kind of app do you want to build either hybrid or native? What mobile OS platform is either Android or iOS?
Moreover, the cost depends on the functions and features of the application. Based on the total hours taken in mental health app development, let’s say 800-1000 hours, the final cost would go around $150,000 with a $150 per hour rate in the USA. And if you are developing the app in India, it would cost you around $25-$30 per hour rate, which would sum up to $30,000.
Now It’s Your Turn
Today, when people are becoming more health conscious, technology is empowering people with fast and efficient solutions. Mental health apps have proven to be among the successful healthcare startups.
Headspace, Calm, and Moodfit are the best examples. These apps prove that if you offer a truly effective mobile app that helps people relieve their mental health issues, your app can make millions of revenue.
You only need a reliable mobile app development company that can help assist you to build the best mental app from scratch.
About the Author
Erma Winter is a Mobile App Developer at MobileCoderz-a well-known best Android app development company that works with startups and businesses to build industry-oriented apps. She holds more than 6 years of experience in developing mobile applications for multiple niches. Besides this, She contributes to leading sites with her thoughts and opinions and research on market trends.
