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Life Lines

• Homewood Health Life Lines - January 2016 - English [PDF]
• Homewood Health Life Lines - January 2016 - French [PDF]
• Homewood Health Life Lines - March 2016 - English [PDF]
• Homewood Health Life Lines - April 2016 - English [PDF]
• Homewood Health Life Lines - April 2016 - French [PDF]
• Homewood Health Life Lines - June 2016 - English [PDF]
• Homewood Health Life Lines - June 2016 - French [PDF]
• Homewood Health Life Lines - July 2016 - English [PDF]
• Homewood Health Life Lines - July 2016 - French [PDF]
• Homewood Health Life Lines - September 2016 - English [PDF]
• Homewood Health Life Lines - September 2016 - French [PDF]

Vitality

• Homewood Health Vitality - January 2016 - English [PDF]
• Homewood Health Vitality - January 2016 - French [PDF]
• Homewood Health Vitality - April 2016 - English [PDF]
• Homewood Health Vitality - April 2016 - French [PDF]
• Homewood Health Vitality - July 2016 - English [PDF]
• Homewood Health Vitality - July 2016 - French [PDF]

Mental Health Kits

• Homewood Health Mental Health Kit - English [PDF]
• Homewood Health Mental Health Kit - French [PDF]

The Mindfulness App

Available for: Apple & Android

Price: Apple products: $3.49, Android products: $1.99

Category: Mental Health: Mindfulness, Meditation, Stress

Purpose: The Mindfulness App is aimed towards assisting in stress reduction and management through increasing conscious awareness, or mindfulness.

How to use this app: A soothing voice guides you through meditation exercises for 3, 5, 15 or 30 minutes in length. There is also the option of silent meditation with a body-scan practice. The app keeps track of your meditation sessions and you have the option of setting notification alerts for when it’s time to meditate. There are also in-app purchases available with varying meditation coaches.

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Happify

Available for: Apple iOS & Android

Price: Free

Category: Mental Health: Stress, Mindfulness

Purpose: Happify is meant to be an easy, every-day app aimed towards improving your overall happiness.

How to use this app: This app is meant to be used when you wish to boost your mood or document an event or experience that made you feel happy. Begin by inputting information about yourself, your values and coping mechanisms. You can select your goal, with options including: conquering negative thoughts, coping better with stress, building self-confidence and more. The app will then provide you with a variety of activities with the intention of achieving your goal, by targeting the “STAGEs” of happiness: savouring, thanking, aspiring, giving and empathizing. There are activities, games, and quizzes, as well as the option to keep a diary of moments that make you happy. You can also use the guided meditation and relaxation features to help reduce stress.

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Headspace

Available for: Apple & Android

Price: Free 10 sessions, with in-app purchases available for more.

Category: Mental health: Meditation, Mindfulness, Anxiety

Purpose: Headspace guides you through 10-minutes meditation and mindfulness sessions.

How to use this app: Headspace includes 10 free sessions, after which you have the option to pay for more either monthly or yearly. The app focuses on meditation and mindfulness, made easy. Each of the 10 sessions is 10 minutes long and narrated by the soothing male voice of a former Buddhist monk. If you choose to subscribe, you will have access to more sessions on more topics, including stress, creativity and relationships. You will also have the option to connect with friends to support each other in your meditation journey.

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Stop, Breathe & Think

Available for: Apple & Android

Price: Free

Category: Mental health: Mindfulness, Meditation

Purpose: Stop, Breathe & Think is an easy-to-use app for free mindfulness, meditation and compassion-building tools.

How to use this app: Check in daily with this app and document how you’re feeling, use the meditation and mindfulness tools and document your progress. The app is based on evidence that suggests that deepening your awareness of your own thoughts and emotions, and recognizing the feelings of others has many positive mental and physical health benefits. Stop, Breathe & Think won the 2015 Webby People’s Voice Award for Health & Fitness.

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Take a Break

Available for: Apple & Android

Price: Free

Category: Mental health

Purpose: Take a Break is an easy-to-use meditation app.

How to use this app: Take a Break is an app designed to break up a stressful day. There are two guided meditations: “work break” and “stress relief”. Each of the meditation sessions is either 7 or 13 minutes long. You can choose to get lulled away with music, nature sounds or voice. You can use take a break anywhere: grab a set of headphones, sit quietly or go outside for a walk, and take a break!

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Measure Workplace Stress

Available for: Apple iOS, Android

Price: Free

Category: Workplace Stress

Purpose: The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) helped to design this app to assess and mitigate workplace stress.

How to use this app: After initiating the app, the user is asked to respond to 25 screens of questions about work demands, organizational factors, relationships, workplace values, health & safety concerns, stress symptoms and offensive behaviours. On the results page, each item is scored in comparison to a reference population so you can see how you compare. For items where your score is worse than the reference population, you can click on an icon that takes you to a pop-up that describes some ideas on dealing with that particular factor.

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Worry Box

Available for: Apple & Android

Price: Free

Category: Mental health: Anxiety

Purpose: The worry box is to help you learn to control your worrisome feelings and provide you with relief from anxiety.

How to use this app: This app has multiple features: a worry box, articles, and coaching and relaxation guides. You can use the worry cognitive diary “the worry box” to help you determine how to cope with worrisome feelings. Use the “worry box audio” features to coach you through exercises to manage your anxiety and to reach a state of relaxation. The app also includes articles and links to articles to help you better understand the cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) approach to managing anxiety.

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MindShift

Available for: Apple & Android

Price: Free

Category: Mental health: Anxiety

Purpose: MindShift’s aim is to help you better cope with anxiety.

How to use this app: Mindshift provides you with a custom-made toolbox for different anxiety provoking situations and how to overcome anxious feelings. It was created in collaboration between BC Mental Health & Addiction Services and AnxietyBC. It will help you learn different wants to relax, develop more helpful and positive ways of thinking, and identify active steps that you can take to start taking charge of your anxiety. “Rather than avoiding or ignoring your anxiety, shift your mind and start facing it”. MindShift provides information to learn more about the causes of anxiety, it allows you to keep track of how you’re feeling, gives you inspiration to overcome anxious feelings, and provides access tools o help you face your anxiety.

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(SAM) Self-help for Anxiety Management

Available for: Apple & Android

Price: Free

Category: Mental health: Anxiety

Purpose: SAM is an app that provides self-help methods to assist with managing anxiety.

How to use this app: The Self-Help for Anxiety Management (SAM) is a friendly app that can help you regain control of your anxiety and emotions. Tell the app how you’re feeling then let the app’s self-help features walk you through some calming or relaxation practices. If you want, you can connect with a social network of other SAM users, or you can keep your thoughts private. It also has an emergency feature, which provides you with breathing and focusing exercises to help you through your anxious thoughts.

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Depression CBT Self-Help Guide

Available for: Android products only

Price: Free

Category: Mental health: Depression

Purpose: This app serves as a tool for Depression, and walks you through the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) approach to managing your depression.

How to use this app: This app includes a screening test with graphs to monitor your depressed mood. You will have access to articles about clinical depression and CBT, including 50 suggestions from CBT with an achievements points feature to help motivate you. Use the Cognitive Thought Diary to learn to challenge your stressful and depressive thoughts. There are also audio options, including Emotional Training and Depression Assistance Audio to learn about accessing calming moods and to better understand clinical depression.

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PTSD Coach

Available for: (Apple, Android, Mac etc)

Price: Free

Category: Mental health: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Purpose: The PTSD coach is designed for veterans and service members who have, or may have, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

How to use this app: PTSD Coach provides education about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, information about professional care, a self-assessment tool for PTSD, helpfinding support, and tools that can helpyou manage the stresses of daily life with PTSD. The tools range from relaxation skills, positive self-talk, and anger management techniques. You can customize your preferences and include your own contact, photos and music. The app was created by VA’s National Center for PTSD and DoD’s National Center for Telehealth & Technology.

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Mental Health Helpline

Available for: Apple & Android

Price: Free

Category: Mental health

Purpose: This app helps to connect you to the Mental Health Helpline, via phone call, instant messaging or e-mail.

How to use this app: Use this app when yourself or someone you know is seeking information about mental illness or a mental health crisis. You can be put in contact with the helpline through calling, chatting, or e-mailing. Calls are confidential and available 24/7, everyday of the year.

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Nature Sounds Relax and Sleep

Available for: Apple & Android

Price: Free with in-app purchases available

Category: Mental health: Sleep

Purpose: This app provides relaxing nature sounds to encourage relaxation and sleep.

How to use this app: Nature Sounds Relax and Sleep provides you with 6 free relaxing nature sounds including ocean sounds, a storm, bird sounds, rain, jungle sounds, and a waterfall. You also have the option of purchasing more relaxing tracks, and can use one of the sounds as your morning alarm.

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SleepTime Alarm Clock

Available for: Apple & Android

Price: Free

Category: Mental health: Sleep

Purpose: SleepTime Alarm Clock aims to help you get a better night’s sleep, by providing tools to peacefully lull you to sleep and by waking you up during your lightest sleep phase.

How to use this app: Sleep Time provides insight into your sleep patterns. This app learns how you sleep and wakes you up gradually during your lightest sleep phase, leaving you feeling refreshed in the morning. Sleep Time generates customized sleep data in easy-to-read charts. Soundscapes simulate a natural environment and help you drift quickly asleep.

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Sleep Bot

Available for: Apple & Android

Price: Free

Category: Mental health: Sleep

Purpose: This alarm clock and sleep monitor records what you do during your sleep and wakes you up at a time that will help you feel more energized and well-rested.

How to use this app: SleepBot allows you to customize multiple alarms. The smart alarm monitors your sleep level, and wakes you up within a 30 minute interval while you are in a lighter sleep level to help you feel more well-rested in the morning.

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My Pain Diary

Available for: Apple & Android

Price: $5.79 for Apple, and $4.99 for Android

Category: Pain Management

Purpose: This app serves as a diary to keep track of chronic and acute pain and pain management.

How to use this app: Use this app to keep an accurate record of your pain for your doctor. Compare multiple conditions using interactive graphs to help you find correlations such as humidity, temperature, barometric pressure etc. The app can help you identify triggers, remedies and patterns for your pain. You can also document with photo attachments, and use a calendar for your progress. Your diary remains private, and you can print it off for your doctor as a PDF.

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12 Steps AA Companion

Available for: Apple & Android

Price: Apple $2.99, Android $1.99

Category: Alcohol addiction

Purpose:

This app provides you with access to the wisdom of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) when you’re on the go.

How to use this app:

The 12 Steps AA Companion provides you with easy-access to information about and the wisdom from Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). It can also help you locate an AA meeting nearby. The app maintains a running sobriety calculator and includes all text and tools found in AA’s “The Big Book”. The app can also let you share your progress via Facebook, Twitter or e-mail if you choose.

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AlcoDroid Alcohol Tracker

Available for: Android products only

Price: Free

Category: Alcohol consumption and addiction

Purpose:

The AlcoDroid Alcohol Tracker includes an alcohol consumption tracker, a drink diary and a blood alcohol content calculator.

How to use this app:

When you’ve had too much to drink or have difficulties remembering how much you’ve consumed, this app can help. AlcoDroid Alcohol Tracker lets you count the number of drinks you’ve had on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. If you’re trying to reduce your drink count, set a goal and track it to see how well you’re doing. An in-app blood alcohol calculator also gives you a reading of how intoxicated you are and shows an estimated level of sobriety.

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Quit Drinking – Andrew Johnson

Available for: Apple & Android

Price: Apple $2.99, Android $2.99

Category: Alcohol addiction

Purpose:

Quit Drinking is an app designed to help you recover from alcohol addiction through relaxation and visualization.

How to use this app:

English hypnotist and stress-management coach Andrew Johnson “has been helping people find calm and order for almost two decades”. Now, he brings his relaxation techniques and visualization tools to alcohol addiction recovery. Whether you’ve only just begun your journey or you’ve been alcohol-free for several decades, Johnson’s techniques may help you find calm and tranquility so you can handle stress without turning to alcohol.

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Craving to Quit

Available for: Apple & Android

Price: Free trial of “Craving to Quit Pro”

Category: Smoking cessation

Purpose:

Craving to Quit is a trial of a 21-day smoking cessation program developed by Yale University.

How to use this app:

Craving to Quit is a free trial of Craving to Quit Pro, a 21-day smoking cessation program developed by and tested at Yale University. Using group-based training principles, Craving to Quit’s customizable features aim to help you develop goals and remind you to check in daily in order to track your progress. Playlists provide audio and visual instruction, nightly reflections, and exercise tracking to help keep you moving and motivated. If you like this trial, you can upgrade to Craving to Quit Pro to access all 21 days of instruction.

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RecoveryBox

Available for: Apple products only

Price: $1.99

Category: Addiction

Purpose:

RecoryBox is an app designed to help you understand and keep track of how certain activities and triggers are affecting your addiction recovery.

How to use this app:

The recoveryBox app uses a lights system to keep track of the user’s daily activities. These are put into categories to mark their helpfulness: green light for beneficial activities, yellow light for potentially harmful behavior and red light for dangerous activities. It also has an email/text service to keep you personally connected with a sponsor or counselor. The app can be tailored for any addiction, ranging from video games addiction to substance addictions.

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Smoke Free

Available for: Apple iOS, Android

Price: Free

Category: Lifestyle

Purpose:

This app has over 20 different, evidence-based, techniques to help you become - and stay - smoke free.

How to use this app:

If you’ve decided to quit smoking for yourself but need extra motivation to keep going day by day, this app can help you achieve your goals. See how much money you've saved, how many cigarettes you've not smoked, how long you’ve been smoke free, how much life you've regained and how your health is improving.

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