Is Digital Health in your Return to School Plan?

More young people have been experiencing mental health challenges during lockdown, those receiving NHS treatment before the crisis are receiving reduced or no support at all, and providing remote pastoral care and PSHE is difficult.

Now, as staff plan for the return to school, whilst continuing remote learning too, an increasing number of schools are using digital health as a proactive measure to support their students’ mental and physical health.

Whether as remote pastoral care, part of the return to school process, or general self care for teachers as well as students during school closure, your Digital Healthy Schools App Library is a safe, quick and effective resource to support your students and staff struggling with mental or physical health challenges.

Here, we look at the top five health issues pupils are most searching for help with, and highlight a top-scoring app that can help in each of these areas.

Take steps now to encourage your students to use your App Library and access apps to help their specific needs.

Top five health app searches

Almost one hundred schools across the UK have now activated their Digital Healthy Schools account. These App Libraries can be used to provide remote access to quality assured apps so that students and their families can learn about and manage their mental and physical health.

Over the past three months, the top five most searched for health topics across the Digital Healthy Schools App Libraries have been: sleep, stress, stopping smoking, healthy living, and anxiety.

This search data indicates that looking after students’ mental health and helping them stay healthy has never been more important.

Below, we suggest a top-scoring app for each of these five health issues:

• Sleep: Ambio Sleep Sounds* allows the user to create an atmosphere to aid the sleeping patterns of both themselves and others. Users can create atmospheres and mixes to fit with their individual needs, using either sounds created for Ambio, or sounds from the user’s own device.
• Stress: Chill Panda is a family friendly relaxation, breathing exercise and activity app. It allows children and adults to start to understand how their bodies respond to different feelings, and includes some play based activities demonstrated by a panda avatar.
• Stopping Smoking: My QuitBuddy provides helpful tips and distractions to overcome cravings, tracking systems to chart progress, and facts needed for understanding the impact smoking has on health, helping people to get, and stay, smoke free.
• Healthy Living: Sidekick Health is a social health game designed to motivate and engage people towards a healthy lifestyle. The app allows users to engage in health-improving tasks in various categories such as nutrition, physical activity and mental exercises.
• Anxiety: Wysa* is an emotionally intelligent chatbot which employs research-backed, widely used techniques such as CBT, DBT, Yoga and meditation, to support users with stress, anxiety, sleep, loss and a whole range of other mental health and wellness needs.

To search for, recommend or download these apps and many more, please go to your local DHS App Library.

*may include in-app purchases