U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Christopher M. Gaylord

Dr. Nigel Bush is a research psychologist and program manager for the Research, Outcomes and Investigations program at National Center for Telehealth and Technology (T2). This blog post was originally posted on the center’s Mobile Health Blog.

When you’re discouraged, maintaining perspective can be difficult. Our new mobile app — “Virtual Hope Box” — can help. It’s based on a physical hope box some clinicians use with their patients — a collection of things they find soothing, reminders of good times and their achievements, and items that help them feel worthwhile or give them hope.

The mobile app is a more portable and private version of a hope box, one that’s always available whenever and wherever you have your phone. For today’s military, that’s almost always. A recent survey of service members revealed that more than 95 percent own and carry mobile phones.

“Virtual Hope Box” is first and foremost a useful coping tool for dealing with stress, negative thoughts and feelings of hopelessness. However, it has also shown promise for helping those with thoughts of self-harm.

We recently finished a proof of concept study with 18 patients at a large regional Department of Veterans Affairs behavioral health clinic and the feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive. A research grant from Military Suicide Research Consortium helped fund the study. We published a paper on the findings in May.

In the study, patients created physical hope boxes in addition to using their “Virtual Hope Box.” Although both versions were popular, patients used the mobile app more often and rated it higher. They found it more convenient, private, portable, accessible and easier to put together, easier to remember to use, and offered them more options.

The “Distract Me” section of the app, which has puzzles and games, got a lot of attention. Patients said playing the games took their minds off whatever was bothering them at the time. Patients also turned quite often to “Inspire Me,” where you can add your own sayings to preloaded inspirational quotes. Many patients used the interactive breathing exercises in “Relax Me” when they were feeling stressed. Perhaps most reassuring to me was the positive response from clinicians. When helping their patients figure out how to personalize their app, they appreciated learning things that helped guide their counseling sessions.

I’ve been talking about this app for quite a while, and I’ve been inundated by emails from providers asking when it would come out. I’m happy to say that “Virtual Hope Box” is available for free for Android and Apple devices. Our next step, which we’ve already begun, is to study the app’s effectiveness in treatment in a larger-scale clinical trial.

To learn more about “Virtual Hope Box” and access related materials, visit the T2 website. Want to share your feedback about the app? We’d like to hear from you — share your thoughts below.