Help yourself to mental health resources
5/20/2024 by Kyle Schofield, Ph.D.; Anne Roche, Ph.D., L.P.; Craig Sawchuk, Ph.D., L.P.
Mental health is just like other parts of our health – it's a good idea to be aware of how we are doing, stay engaged with healthy habits and seek additional advice and help if we are struggling.
Self-help resources are one of several treatment options available to help support you in your mental health journey. From workbooks, to apps, to websites, there are many ways to learn how to cope with stress, insomnia, anxiety and depression on your own. The benefits of self-help include being flexible — you can use them anytime, anywhere — and cost-effective, as many of these resources are either low-cost or free. The drawbacks of self-help are that they can feel like a "one-way street." The material may not be tailored to your particular situation and they offer limited accountability, so you have to make sure you keep up with using the information and skills you are learning.
But how do you choose?
There are seemingly endless amounts of self-help materials out there. For example, over 20,000 mental health apps are currently available, yet only a fraction of them have any evidence supporting their effectiveness. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a highly effective, skill-building approach that teaches people ways to cope with distressing thoughts, difficult emotions and behavior change. Research has shown that CBT delivered in a self-help format can be very helpful for a wide range of mental health problems.
The attached document shares a number of self-help books, apps, websites and free Mayo-developed online resources that are based on CBT principles for stress, insomnia, anxiety and depression.
If you need additional mental health support beyond self-help, we encourage you to talk with your primary care team about other available treatment options.
Kyle Schofield, Ph.D. is a clinical health psychology fellow in Primary Care in Rochester and Kasson.
Anne Roche, Ph.D., L.P., and Craig Sawchuk, Ph.D., L.P., are clinical psychologists in Primary Care in Rochester and Kasson in Integrated Behavioral Health.