Calm Harm received the award for Best App at this year’s Northern Digital Awards.
The total number of downloads has now reached over 500,000 and the app has appeared in the top 50 Health and Wellbeing apps on iOS and Google Play in both the UK and US as well as being labelled one of the ‘must-have apps’ for New Yorkers in the US.
However, it was following a tweet that went viral over the Christmas period that the number of downloads exploded reaching large audiences in the US and mainland Europe.
Dr Nihara Krause, founder of stem4 and Consultant Clinical Psychologist commented “With over 18,000 children and young people admitted to hospital or treated at A&Es for self-harm in 2015/16*, it’s vital that we do everything possible to address the problem early which is why we created Calm Harm.
Calm Harm is based on the principles of dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) – a type of talking therapy that’s often effective in people with mood disorders and whilst it’s not a replacement for professional treatment, our aim is to make this as accessible as possible to a wide range of people, particularly those hard to reach individuals that perhaps haven’t yet sought help.”
Nicola Tiffany, managing director at HMA added “This has been a fantastic project to work on. Working closely with the potential audience for this app to co-design the user interface was invaluable to the process and has resulted in an app we’re all very proud of. The app has now been downloaded over half a million times and as a result, we’ve received some great reviews which is a good indication that it is regularly helping those battling with mental health problems that lead to self-harm.”
* Source: NSPCC, December 2016
