A mental health and wellbeing app developed over the past four years in conjunction with a specialist neurological NHS Trust is being launched into the wider public and private sectors.
ShinyMind has been continually developed since 2017 and has been created in conjunction with frontline staff at the Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust. The Trust has been using the app among its staff since well before the pandemic.
Despite the huge growth in the launch and use of mental health apps over the past 18 months in particular, ShinyMind is the only workforce mental health app to have received NHS Proven Innovation status.
The app was created to help increase support around employee mental health resilience and wellbeing, which is accessible 24/7, and enables people to use interactive personalised resources to develop and thrive.
ShinyMind has a Net Promoter Score (NPS) score of over 70 per cent and a retention rate after 30 days of over 60 per cent, based on trials with over 2,500 NHS frontline staff, many of whom are working in A&E departments and Intensive Care.
The vast majority – 97 per cent – claimed the app made them more resilient and a further 96 per cent felt less stressed.
A group of nurses and consultants from the Walton Centre came together with Rebecca Howard, founder of ShinyMind, to develop an app which was suited to the requirements of stressful and demanding roles such as those on the NHS frontline.
Initially working together on resilience workshops for Walton Centre staff, the development of the ShinyMind app soon became a joint project.
“Health and wellbeing have really high on the agenda for the Walton Centre for the past 15 years, we’ve recognised that as being a priority for our staff for a long time, way before COVID, we’re very well known for our commitment to our staff,” Jane Mullin, deputy director of workforce and innovation at the Walton Centre, tells NR Times.
“Many of our staff are really interested in resilience and making a difference so were very interested in working on the development of the app. It took about a year to co-produce it and at that time it was one of the first apps of its kind.
“While using digital has been new to a lot of people during COVID, for us it’s already embedded and we’ve had some great feedback from our staff, we’ve had many saying they love it and use it every day, one called it ‘digital calmness at your fingertips’.
“Looking at how it’s now being used elsewhere, it’s amazing that we’ve been part of the journey, and particularly for our frontline staff who were involved in co-producing it, I know they have real pride in being involved.”
The rollout of ShinyMind is now including the private sector, with protection insurance business LifeSearch being the first adopter. It has also become an investor in the app, supporting its ongoing growth strategy.
ShinyMind founder and CEO Rebecca, a leadership psychotherapist and behavioural change expert, says: “The majority of mental health apps are CBT-based but this represents just one approach to psychotherapy.
“In order to provide a resource which works for as many of us as possible, we haven’t tied ourselves to one approach; instead, we have blended elements from different psychotherapeutic approaches. Why? Because everyone is different with very different needs.
“Through a wide breadth of everyday interactive activities, this multi-modality of different approaches is reflected in ShinyMind, to help people find something that works for them. Equally, mindfulness and meditation activities don’t work for everyone. For those – the majority – who can’t always understand and steer their own thoughts, guided meditation is better suited. This is also provided via the app.
“This is the ShinyMind difference, as is the fact that users are encouraged to personalise the app and ‘put themselves into it’ so there’s some graft involved, but then from that you get the gold in terms of the learning.
“It’s this that makes it so ‘sticky’ unlike many other apps, where average usage after 30 days is under 10 per cent. You put so much of yourself into ShinyMind, that to delete it would be like deleting a big piece of your life.”
LifeSearch founder and CEO Tom Baigrie adds: “ShinyMind proved itself inside the NHS in the most extreme conditions imaginable so it’s a very welcome addition to our network of support services.”
