Thought Diary Pro app for iPhone and iPad
The way we think determines both how we feel and how we behave. The way we think about ourselves, other people and our place in the world has a direct influence on our emotional state and our behaviour. Consequently by changing the way we think we can positively influence our mood and how we respond to situations. This is the premise behind Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) which has become the most effective psychological treatment available for a range of emotional and behavioural problems including depression and anxiety.
A thought diary is designed to help people record and change the thoughts that cause emotional and psychological distress. The Thought Diary Pro is the advanced version of the Thought Diary, and allows the identification of thinking errors (also known as cognitive distortions), and the the modification of our unhelpful thoughts into more productive ways of thinking. By challenging the thoughts and beliefs that cause discontentment, dissatisfaction and other emotional and behavioural distress, we can improve our mental health and can change the destructive or adverse behaviours we may engage in as a result of our negative thoughts.
Thought Diary Pro is designed to be the second step in changing our thinking patterns by helping individuals identify the thinking errors that they engage in, and thereby helping change these thoughts. The effect of modifying these thought can reduce the negative emotional and behavioural consequences of experiencing these negative thoughts. Similar to the Thought Diary, the Pro version was designed by an experienced clinical psychologist and CBT therapist who believed that these tools should be available in the most accessible form for individuals to use in today’s fast technological world. It can be used by people either in therapy as a useful adjunct to the treatment, and there is a feature that allows the Thought Diary to be emailed straight to their therapist. However, it can also be used by those individuals who are embarking on a self-guided course of CBT.
Pros and cons of Thought Diary Pro app for iPhone and iPad
Thought Diary Pro app good for
If you are looking for a way to keep thought records without carrying around paper charts, and if you want to have a discreet way to do the thought records, this will do that for you. It is quite simple and straightforward, just like the usual paper forms. I also tried eCBT as a comparions and found it just to be circular, badly written paragraphs of CBT advice, not at all useful for looking at your own specific thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
Definitely a must application to capture all your negative thoughts. Ubiquitous. I hope there will be future updates and improvements on the user interface et cetera. Landscape mode would be nice. Customizing the fields would be nice. Optimizing the application for the latest iPhone IOS, such as multitasking. Being able to export a report to a spreadsheet file would be useful. I plan on using this application regularly throughout the day. Nice job.
This looks to be the best CBT app on the App Store now. I was previously using iCBT but found the look too cluttered and not particularly attractive.
My favorite feature is that the reports look exactly like the paper ones that my therapist asks me to fill in. Its not practical to carry these sheets everywhere I go and theres the fear that Ill misplace a filled in sheet and have my innermost thoughts revealed to people I know. The result is that I never fill out the CBT sheets even though I find them helpful
This app solves this problem. I always have my iPhone with me so if I ever need to do a CBT exercise, I can do it right away and then when I see my therapist I can email them my "sheets".
As for suggestions:
- iPhone 5 support: This app could really benefit from the full 4" screen
- Multitasking: allow you to exit the app and come back to where you were.
- Enable viewing data reports in the app without having to email them. An important part of CBT is to look at a completed report and review where our thoughts went wrong.
- A better entry process: It would be more efficient if you could enter each column step by step instead of going down the list, entering a section, goin back to the list, entering another section and so far. Instead youd press New Report and then go screen by screen entering information for each step then reach the end with your completed report.
Clean, simple, easy to use. Not cluttered with excess useless features like a lot if mental health apps. Everything you need for CBT and nothing more. Really like the email report option but would be nice to be able to view this summary in the app.
Some bad moments
So far this app has been really great for me to use. Ive been in therapy for 8 months and Ive consistently have had trouble lugging around my thought journal - so this is a great alternative. Not to mention that the step by step process makes organizing my thoughts and answers much easier. I also love that I am able to rate my thoughts, this helps put them into perspective. I showed this app to my therapist and she was really excited about it.
My one complaint though is that the app does not allow the ability to delete thought entries. Ive accidentally opened new entries when I didnt mean to, and now I am unable to delete a blank entry. Or at least change the app so that it doesnt automatically save blank entries.
Also, I am unsure how this app organizes the entries for I have only had it for a few days. I hope that it will eventually lump the entries into months, otherwise it will be a pain to scroll through them all if I decide I want to reread a particular one.
Okay, this is a really awesome app. Especially for someone like me that has racing destructive thoughts but then can never really remember what they are because they are so second nature. It is extremely easy to use. I also like the spread sheet that it compiles and you can email it to whomever or to yourself. I just have two small gripes:
1. It wont sync across my iPhone and iPad. I have connected them via USB to computer and tried it that way, I have also tried it over wi-fi and it still has the bulk of my thought information on my iPad and not a single entry on my iPhone. It would be nice if they could make the apps sync since my phone is always with me but sometimes my iPad is just more convienant to use.
2: I would like to be able to see my whole single entry after Ive inputed it instead of having to compile a spreadsheet report. I just want to see what Ive inputed via the tick boxes in a simple flowing paragraph so I can check for spelling errors and such as typing on an iAnything is not always accurate.
Add those two capabilities and Id give it five stars.
Dealing with anxiety and PTSD. 3 members of my family were murdered. Hard to handle all the feelings especially when I was using negative thinking. When I start to feel anxious, afraid, sad etc... Get out Thought Diary. Just by going through process in Diary, helps me stop negative thinking pattern and come up with a better one. Best of all......I can email my Diary to my therapist. Thank you so much for making this available.
Utter dreck. CBT that totally lacks follow through. No response thoughts.
Need to be able to select multiple thinking errors. Its very important to be able to apply multiple thinking error option for a given situation. If not it gets rather general and not a complete picture.
It seems very intuitive and does help figure our where my thinking is a little off base. As a matter of fact, I just thought of another thought to log….I read a book about 15 years ago by David Burns called Feeling good that I think was the precursor to the entire CBT movement. I may be wrong, but I do see this app as being a worth while try for anyone. It certainly can’t hurt.
Usually Thought Diary Pro iOS app used & searched for
cbt thought record diary,
thought diary,
cognitive diary,
and other. So, download free Thought Diary Pro .ipa to run this nice iOS application on iPhone and iPad.
