A new app has been created by one of the student IT Innovation Challenges projects. Self-Heal is a free tool that guides the management and reduction of self-injury. It can be used anonymously and independently, to enable users to take recovery into their own hands.

The app provides crisis management suggestions, relevant links, information, phone numbers, as well as a gallery of images selected to inspire, motivate and provoke. It has been developed in collaboration with students and professionals.

How it works: The science behind the App

Distraction tasks are inspired by techniques used in dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT), which is the frontline psychological therapy used in the UK to treat self-harm. Imagery has been known for a long time to affect our emotions, thoughts, and outlook – Just think about the amount of money that gets spent on advertising and graphic design! Self-Heal contains more than 750 pictures each carefully selected to motivate recovery. More than half of these images are captioned to provoke thought and engage the user.

The free Self-Heal app is available for Android and Apple.

More information:
http://www.self-healapp.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/selfhealapp/