Nine universities across Atlantic Canada are asking students to use an app that tracks their mental health.
The Mood Check app, created by an IT company in New Brunswick, encourages students to reveal how they’re feeling.
“I’m sure everyone at different points probably stops and thinks ‘OK, why am I feeling so terrible?’ and you might draw a cause for it, but with the mood check app, it’s going to keep this information, it will track it for you,” explains Matthew MacLean, a mental health strategist at the University of New Brunswick.
The app asks students how they’re feeling – awful, great or just OK – as well as what they’re doing, where they are and who they’re with.
“The idea there is we want to try and clue people into that link between their mood and what’s going on around them,” says MacLean.
The two-year-old app is already used at the University of New Brunswick, but its creator – CyberPsyc Software – has created a challenge among Atlantic Canadian universities.
The New Brunswick company is asking students to use the app for 11 days beginning next week as a competition to see how many are willing their share their feelings, but reaction is mixed.
“It could be a good mental check … but at the same time it is getting you more attached to your phone, which I don’t know is necessarily a good thing,” said one student.
“I don’t think mental health needs to be a competition, but at the same time it’s good,” says Lee Thomas, a mental health advocate and former UNB student. “It’s good because it gets people talking.”
Thomas suspects universities will find there are plenty of students who feel stressed, anxious, or are going through a hard time.
“They need counselors to support them through that, they need one-on-one suspect, they need peer support, they need other services,” she says.
The Mood Check app challenge begins Monday.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Laura Brown
