This month we are taking a closer look at Mello, a new app from Orygen Digital, helping young Australians improve their mental health. Mello aims to help young people overcome stuck thinking and break cycles of negative thinking to treat youth depression and anxiety.

“Young people face so many barriers these days when trying to access mental health care, at an age when they’re most likely to need it. Mello is a really exciting step towards making mental health treatments more accessible and engaging for young people, so they have the support when and where they need it”

– Dr Imogen Bell, Senior Research Fellow, Psychologist, and Lead of Mello

Orygen Digital is the technology division of Australia’s leading youth mental health research organisation, Orygen. Their work aims to pioneer new and positive approaches to the prevention and treatment of mental disorders for young people and their families.

The researchers at Orygen Digital focus on developing digital mental health products, using existing and emerging technologies to transform the delivery of youth mental health care.

In addition to Mello, Orygen Digital also offer MOST – an online mental health support platform for young people aged 12 to 25 years experiencing mental ill-health.

Mello is a free mental health app offering effective, evidence-based tools to target stuck thinking. The program aims to address the address worry and rumination – a common problem for young people and the underlying cause for anxiety, depression and many other mental health conditions.

The app was developed by researchers, psychologists and developers alongside young people using practical, science-based techniques. It provides evidence-based activities for in-the-moment relief from negative thoughts and helps young people build skills to break the cycle of negative thinking long term.

The Mello app provides a comprehensive mental health toolkit for stuck thinking. The activities are based on psychological treatment approaches including; Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Meta-cogntivie therapy (MCT), Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT).

Users of the app can:

• Track their mood through regular promoted check-ins
• Receive tailored therapy activity recommendations
• Learn practical skills
• Schedule exercises, check-ins and venting sessions
• Complete bite-sized, therapist-led short courses
• Access a range of evidence-based therapy activities to improve their mental wellbeing

Mello was designed for young people aged 16 to 25 years. However, people outside this age group may still benefit from using Mello, but clinical trials have only been conducted on people aged 16 to 25.

Mello has many benefits for using including:

• Break negative thinking spirals
• Reduce feelings of depression and anxiety
• Better understand their mind
• Gain control over stuck thinking

Health professionals can recommend Mello to patients who might be struggling with stuck thinking. The app also contains evidence based intervention strategies that clinicians might use in their sessions with young people.

Mello is free to access with no catches or hidden charges.

Mello is free to download on smartphone devices from the Apple App Store and Google Play.

You can also visit the Mello website to learn more about the app.

Recent randomised controlled trials with young people with clinical levels of depression and/or anxiety and problems with repetitive thinking  who used the app for six weeks found that:

• 82% of Mello users experienced less anxiety,
• 79% were less depressed, and
• 83% had less repetitive negative thinking.

After using Mello, one in three young people no longer had clinically significant depression, and one in four no longer had clinically significant anxiety.

Learn more about the research behind Mello here.