iOS17 will feature software that helps users to document their mental health, Rhys Thomas tests it for woo

We all look at screens more than we should. That’s not quite a fact, but it may as well be. That’s just the way it is - our lives revolve around little screens and bigger screens as much as they do having a nice glass of water and touching grass with your bare skin. Like anything, there’s good and there’s bad (and there’s ugly!) to screen time, and really, a better metric than looking at how many hours you’re spending on there would be to assess your relationship to the phone and how you use that time. A quality versus quantity debate. Like other parts of life. At least that’s what I think.

When Apple announced that iOS 17, its forthcoming iPhone software update, is going to include new mental health features, I was intrigued. The features will also be available on the iPadOS 17, and watchOS10.

The main feature of the Health app’s mental health section is a log of how you feel on a certain day, or certain moment in the day. Within this feature you have a sliding scale from ‘very unpleasant’ to ‘very pleasant’, you are then given a list of emotions to tick in relation to how you have felt, and then it asks what has had the biggest impact on your feelings. The answers for this include the internal (health, identity, self-care etc.) , the external (tasks, work, money), and the social (friends, partner, dating). There’s the option to write if you’d like to be more specific, too. The log you can visit via a calendar within the app.

There’s also a mental health questionnaire. The questions take both the questions from the American Psycholical Associations’ Patient health questionnaire for depression, and the Anxiety and Depression Association of America’s questionnaire for anxiety. It’s 16 questions and you get a score for both anxiety and depression. They have made the last question, which asks about self-harm and suicide, optional. You can then create a PDF to share with a doctor, which could help to speed up a consultation, in theory. Apple has stated that these are the same anxiety and depression assessments often used in clinics. The US and the UK versions of these tests do vary slightly. This one on the NHS has two additional questions: Have you had an anxiety attack? And one which asks you to tick off any options that have been making you worry of late, including “little or no sexual desire or pleasure during sex”, “something bad that happened to me recently”.. But otherwise, the NHS questions are the same. They also have the same answer options as the Health app’s questionnaire. The scoring system is slightly different.

The beta version is available to download and use now, which is what I’m using so there could be tweaks by the time it officially lands with iOS17, which is expected in mid-September.

TUESDAY

With the beta all set up, I began. As you open the app there’s the option to track how you feel in the moment, and then also how you’ve felt across the entire day. In truth, I was having a fucking miserable day. But I was impressed with the feature. I can’t figure out whether I downplayed how I was feeling or not (especially given I was turning it into a TikTok) but I do think generally this felt comfortable and private in the way very similar tests and questionnaires I’ve had to fill out in front of a GP haven’t. Of course, lying to play up an issue is also something people do, so neither are perfect but it’s an amazing resource to have at your hands. I feel a little at peace for having answered the questions and grateful for taking a few moments of my day to check in with myself, but with a form of professional, clinical guidance.

My results were 12 for anxiety and 14 for depression, which both fall into the ‘moderate’ category. I’m not expecting there to be gradual improvement throughout the week at all, I assume it’ll be more up and down, but either way having a record day to day feels like it’ll help me in the present. You can re-do the questionnaire and so I re-did mine a second time and the numbers jumped up slightly. I’m taking this to suggest I was hiding my feelings a bit, and I found a bit of comfort in having been more honest with myself and going further. A bit like when you stretch and then you take a breath and somehow you can stretch further.

As far as I can tell, you can’t currently re-visit the app and download a previous form, you need to save it there and then. The options are to ‘save to files’ or to export to various apps (WhatsApp, Gmail, Instagram etc.) like you can with a photo. I took screenshots. Today I felt ‘unpleasant’ mainly to do with work and identity, and the emotions I ticked are disappointed, discouraged, hopeless, ashamed, scared, sad, irritated, and lonely. Which… could be better, but there we are! Straight to bed it is.

WEDNESDAY

I woke up feeling a bit better than yesterday, but I decided to leave logging thoughts until later in the day so that I gave myself and the world around me a chance to do things. In future, ideally, every time I notice a feeling I will do my best to log it. Logging my thoughts is helping me to not feel overwhelmed and to see them a little more objectively. It’s interesting to see how I am throughout the day, and to log things daily so that I can then eventually see how I am throughout the week. The feature is helping me to realise that life is constant, and ever-changing, emotions are temporary. I logged a slightly pleasant day. Emotions: grateful, guilty, passionate, relieved. Because of: my partner, and self-care.

THURSDAY

I felt more or less normal and even slightly upbeat today. I did have a lot to do, and though normally I’d feel demotivated by the looming list of chores, I felt like I wanted to do my best to get through as many of them as possible. Earlier this week, and beforehand, I’d just distract myself from these tasks however possible. But today I felt ready and good. I ate a healthy breakfast and enjoyed that the sun was out at lunchtime. Of course, as always, I was slightly stressed and anxious, and due to how bad I felt on day one of this, a little scared about the fragility of my mental health. But I had reasons for feeling the way I did, and had gotten through them.

Today was the first time I had landed on “pleasant”, just about. The borderline between that and “slightly pleasant”. What was interesting was that though this was the first time I landed in pleasant, I still noted that I was stressed, because of workload, but also anxious. I think this is helpful because should I find elements of anxiety across all moods, it will help me to accept that I live with a general sense of anxiety, and as a result will do my best to manage that day to day. I am clinically diagnosed as anxious, and used to have severe depression which can always come back, but seeing this every day is helping me to feel okay with living with it, not denying it.

FRIDAY

I think that ticking off emotions is very interesting and helpful, especially for men. Each time I click on an emotion, I am trying to think about which part of my overall feelings is linked to that emotion, what the trigger for the emotion is, if you will. This is something I’m pretty good at, but given that men aren’t as emotionally communicative as other genders (as a generalisation) this does feel like a good private exercise and tool for improving that. You can get very specific in the notes and say which emotions correlate to which stimuli. I haven’t bothered doing that because I generally remember it, but that may be an interesting exercise. Today I logged a very pleasant day because of my community, partner, self-care, identity, and health. Essentially, I went to an event I enjoyed and had spent the day with my partner beforehand. I only had two drinks, which for me was good self-care, and I booked a gym class for the morning. The emotions I flagged were interesting, as well as feeling amused, calm, content, grateful, happy, joyful, passionate and peaceful (you can see why logging a few moments in the day might be useful) I felt anxious and ashamed. It was a reminder that anxiousness is constant in my life, and that on very good days I am merely managing it well, it isn’t not there.

SATURDAY

I’ve been to the gym, I’ve seen a friend for lunch, and I bought two books. I’m heading to an event in the evening. All is nice and chill. I’ve logged a slightly pleasant day because of health and friends, and said I felt content and happy. But I also felt ashamed, embarrassed, and irritated at various points too. I think I’m learning that a slightly pleasant day is a nice space for to aim for daily.

FRIDAY

I think that ticking off emotions is very interesting and helpful, especially for men. Each time I click on an emotion, I am trying to think about which part of my overall feelings is linked to that emotion, what the trigger for the emotion is, if you will. This is something I’m pretty good at, but given that men aren’t as emotionally communicative as other genders (as a generalisation) this does feel like a good private exercise and tool for improving that. You can get very specific in the notes and say which emotions correlate to which stimuli. I haven’t bothered doing that because I generally remember it, but that may be an interesting exercise. Today I logged a very pleasant day because of my community, partner, self-care, identity, and health. Essentially, I went to an event I enjoyed and had spent the day with my partner beforehand. I only had two drinks, which for me was good self-care, and I booked a gym class for the morning. The emotions I flagged were interesting, as well as feeling amused, calm, content, grateful, happy, joyful, passionate and peaceful (you can see why logging a few moments in the day might be useful) I felt anxious and ashamed. It was a reminder that anxiousness is constant in my life, and that on very good days I am merely managing it well, it isn’t not there.

SATURDAY

I’ve been to the gym, I’ve seen a friend for lunch, and I bought two books. I’m heading to an event in the evening. All is nice and chill. I’ve logged a slightly pleasant day because of health and friends, and said I felt content and happy. But I also felt ashamed, embarrassed, and irritated at various points too. I think I’m learning that a slightly pleasant day is a nice space for to aim for daily.

SUNDAY

After logging my day on Saturday, I went out and I drank more than I should have, I woke up feeling ashamed and disgusted (though in retrospect the word sounds a little strong) as well as embarrassed, lonely, jealous and guilty. I attributed all of it to health, fitness, and self-care. The day was slightly unpleasant, but after logging that, I had a lovely evening so I ended up putting a momentary emotion log in too, these are the same as a log for the day but they are about how you are feeling right in a specific moment. In this moment, I logged that I felt very pleasant. I wondered about relationships where people are doing their tests in front of each other and whether it could cause more harm than good in terms of insecurities about being a good partner if the other person is showing signs of depression, but I then figured that communication is probably key, and this could also help people to confide in one another.

MONDAY

After a nice, early, Sunday evening, I felt refreshed and ready for a week at work. I logged it a slightly pleasant day where I felt calm, happy, joyful, passionate, peaceful, and -because I was having a notably better day than I did exactly a week before- proud. I attributed it all to identity and work.

Given it had been a week, I decided to do the initial questionnaire again, this time my anxiety score was 12; depression 10. Both are moderate, and I feel normal. If the constant moderate depression continues, I have to accept to an extent that this is my general state, more or less. My neutral isn’t the app’s neutral, the average person’s neutral. I’ve been aware of this for a while, I’m clinically diagnosed as having anxiety, and having had chronic depression, and so I generally do my best to manage these conditions – I don’t drink caffeine because it heightens my anxiety, for example. While it might sound like having something on my phone to remind me of this, and to make me confront my emotions is a bad thing (and it might be for some), I actually found the experience to be very reassuring, grounding, and comforting. I feel like I am more in touch with my emotions than I was, too. I think I’m very likely to keep using the feature.