Apple launches new features that can tap into deeper areas of health and provide powerful insights.
Mental health and vision health features have been included in iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and watchOS 10. With this new provision, Apple emphasizes on the fact that mental health is as important as physical health and affects people every day in how they think, feel, and act.
The new mental health features will allow users to log their momentary emotions and daily moods. It will help them assess and track their emotions and attain important information that will be pivotal in their mental health journey. All of these new features — and existing health features — are backed by science and built with privacy at the core.
“Our goal is to empower people to take charge of their own health journey. With these innovative new features, we’re expanding the comprehensive range of health and wellness tools that we offer our users across iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch,” said Sumbul Desai, M.D., Apple’s vice president of Health. “Mental health and vision health are important, but often overlooked, and we’re excited to introduce features that offer valuable new insights to provide users with an even better understanding of their health. These insights help support users in their daily decisions and offer more informed conversations with their doctors.”
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According to research, reflecting on one’s own mental state can help improvise emotional awareness. “Identifying our feelings has been shown to help us manage difficult emotions, appreciate positive moments, and improve well-being.” Multiple studies by researchers have shown that identifying feelings reduces emotions like sadness and anger, and positively impacts our body by slowing our heart rate. Additionally, in a survey of participants in the UCLA Digital Mental Health Study, initial results showed more than 80 percent of participants found reflecting on their mood in the study app increased emotional awareness, and about half said it increased wellbeing,” adds Dr. Michelle Craske, a distinguished professor of psychology and psychiatry at UCLA.
Through the health app users can scroll through engaging, multidimensional shapes and choose how they are feeling in a range from Very Pleasant to Very Unpleasant. They can also select associations that are having the biggest impact on their feelings, like travel or family, and describe their feelings, such as grateful or worried.
In addition to that, users will be able to identify the contributing factors to their mental state — whether it’s associations or lifestyle factors, such as sleep or exercise — and can use these insights to better manage their overall health.
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