ABSTRACT
Mental health apps (MHapps) enable people to get a sense of the status of their psychological health and wellbeing by tracking certain information of a psychological nature. This chapter focuses on the experience of using a health and wellbeing app, with particular interest in the role of the visual and the textual forms of communication. MHapps include a variety of information on the psychological health of the user which is then visually displayed within the apps. The apps record and display information that forms an image of the mental health of the user of the app. This act of tracking is not a new phenomenon and one that is commonly linked to the quantified self movement. The chapter provides a case study of the experience of self-tracking in the app Rize, which is a UK-based app launched in 2014 and is representative of MHapps in general.
