WIRED's spiritual advice columnist on whether digital tools can solve a health crisis they helped create.
Dyspnea, or shortness of breath, is a common side effect of anxiety, which rose, along with depression, by a whopping 25 percent globally between 2020 and 2021, according to a report from the World Health Organization. It's not coincidental that this mental health crisis has dovetailed with the explosion of behavioral health apps. And you're certainly not alone, Mindful, in doubting the effectiveness of these products.
I'd argue, however, that such apps are not intended to be alternatives to therapy, but that they represent a digital update to the self-help genre. Like the paperbacks found in the Personal Growth sections of bookstores, such apps promise thatcan be improved through “self-awareness” and “self-knowledge”—virtues that, like so many of their cognates , are foisted on individuals in the twilight of public institutions and social safety nets.
Helping oneself is, of course, an awkward idea, philosophically speaking. It's one that involves splitting the self into two entities, the helper and the beneficiary. The analytic tools offered by these apps invite users to become both scientist and subject, taking note of their own behavioral data and looking for patterns and connections—that anxiety is linked to a poor night's sleep, for example, or that regular workouts improve contentedness.
Of course, for all the focus on self-knowledge and personalized data, what these apps don't help you understand is why you're anxious or depressed in the first place. This is the question that most people seek to answer through therapy, and it's worth posing about our society's mental health crisis as a whole. That quandary is obviously beyond my expertise as an advice columnist, but I'll leave you with a few things to consider.
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