Combined Minds is a free app to help families and friends support a young person who has certain mental ill-health conditions. It helps them find ways to provide the right environment to help the young person affect their own change. This approach also helps families and friends search for their own strengths, creating a solid connection and supportive network.

Combined Minds is intended to support young people aged 11 and over. It provides parents/carers and friends with ways to identify the strengths of a young person and offers suggestions on areas of focus. It is not a diagnostic tool or a treatment approach and does not replace the assessment and intervention of a mental health professional.

Combined Minds is for family and friends of teenagers who have a diagnosed mental health condition but can also be used for other age groups and for those who may show symptoms without formal diagnosis.

Combined Minds uses a ‘Strengths-Based’ approach which has been shown to be effective in recovery. This approach moves away from the ‘deficits’ that individuals with mental health difficulties might be said to show or experience and instead focuses on resourcefulness and resilience.

The app provides activities that can be carried out to support different mental health conditions and includes helpful guidance to promote change. The app allows you to record what has worked so that it acts as a prompt at times of need. It also signposts to helpful services and provides support for families and friends themselves.

A Strengths-Based approach is derived and adapted from best practice in social care and is based on The Care Act 2014 which requires local authorities to ‘consider the person’s own strengths and capabilities, and what support might be available from their wider support network or within the community to help’ In order to do this the assessor ‘should lead to an approach that looks at a person’s life holistically, considering their needs in the context of their skills, ambitions, and priorities’.

Combined Minds was developed to offer ideas based on a Strengths-Based Model to:

1. Provide parents and carers with strategies, activity tips, encouragement, clinically accurate information on different mental ill-health conditions and signposting to targeted support for a variety of mental ill-health conditions often noted in young people.
2. Provide friends of young people experiencing a mental ill-health condition with strategies and signposting of what they can do, together with ways to support themselves.
3. Develop a shared safety plan with a distressed young person so that everyone knew what to do and could access help quickly and effectively.

Latest Combined Minds analytics data (up until the end of Dec 2023) tells us:

There have been over 69,000 downloads of the app to date by parents, carers and friends.

Around 86% of the individuals who used Combined Minds reported that using this app helped them in the moment.

Set up some quiet, one to one time to have a conversation with the young person and share any concerns. Discuss how the app helps with identifying strengths and how they may be used to challenge difficulties. Discuss what activity the young person feels the most comfortable to start with and also how they would like you to be involved.  Agree on when you might talk again to find out progress. Make sure you notice the positive change and offer support if they feel stuck.

stem4 has lots of resources available for parents/carers/friends as well as young people available on their Resources page.

We advise that you keep your information secure by setting a passcode or touch access on your device to prevent unauthorised access. The app content is not suitable for those under the age of 11.

Combined Minds provides a range of different activities since we understand that everyone is different and may respond better to some activities rather than others. We suggest the choice of activity is collaboratively decided with the young person concerned if at all possible. Follow the guidelines on how to choose the strengths that best support carrying out the activity and focus on how to support the young person to action this, one step at a time. Avoid trying too many activities at the same time.

How often you use the app is very individual. Use it to set up the steps to approaching an activity and to monitor progress. If you find you are checking the app very often, checking with your parents/carer/friend about the activities very regularly or feel uncomfortable without it, have a break. Listen also to others. If they tell you that you are using it too much, have a break from the app.

Once you have added activities you would like to try to My Activities these can be reviewed by clicking the arrow next to the activity and selecting Mark as Tried. The activity can be rated as helping or not and comments added. These will then appear on the ‘View activities I’ve tried’ screen with a colour coded arrow (green for helpful; amber for helped a little; and red for unhelpful). You can choose to show or hide those activities recorded as not helping. This will allow you to quickly identify your most helpful activities.

Activity data can be reset in the App Settings. This will reset all the activity data (activities to try and activities tried) as well as all activity feedback information. Please note that once activity data is reset, this action cannot be undone and all current activity data will be deleted.

User accounts are not created in Combined Minds so there is no way to share or connect the app content with anybody else. We would advise you to screenshot any data you would like to share or write it down. We value your privacy and offering a small digital footprint but sadly it comes with a small price in terms of sharing and recovery of lost data.

Using activities that work can be helpful in making change. However, always check with the young person if they find re-using the activity helpful in order not to over-use them, thereby losing their impact.

Combined Minds should be used collaboratively. Enforcing an activity may not engage a person in making a change. The first step is always to carry out a strength finding activity and then discuss how each strength can help make a change to the activity you might suggest would be a good one to choose. Provide a reason why you think the activity will help but always get agreement from the young person about starting it.

User accounts are not created in Combined Minds so there is no way to share or connect the app content with anybody else. We would advise you to screenshot any data you would like to share or write it down. You could also download the Combined Minds app onto your own device if you have one.

We worked co-collaboratively with a small group of parents and young people to develop Combined Minds. This work explored desired outputs, reviewed tasks and wording, user journeys, visual concepts, security/privacy, user experience, and tone of voice.

User feedback requested clinically accurate and reassuring information on conditions and resources, practical strategies, ways to support self, immediate support framework and anonymity in terms of not collating identifiable data.

We have recently carried out a small pilot evaluation with a group of parents to review further needs subsequent to the pandemic.

We welcome user feedback which can be emailed to combinedminds@stem4.org.uk.

NHS Digital DCB0129 standards.

This standard is based on a number of quality management principles including a strong customer focus, the motivation and implication of top management, the process approach and continual improvement.

Also our app developers:

• Design with Users Needs
• Design with Data
• Iteration – New updates depending on things that have (or haven’t) worked or new functionality.

We also do strive to be as broadly accessible as possible through the use of industry best practices. For example, contrast colours for those with sight issues, using a font that’s clear to read etc.

stem4 has put a number of measures in place to ensure that our apps are clinically safe to use.

The app has been developed by a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and validated by the group it is for. All our apps comply with the clinical safety standard DCB0129. Developed by the NHS, this standard is designed to help manufacturers of health IT software evidence the clinical safety of their products.

stem4 has a Clinical Risk Management Plan. For every app, we undertake a Clinical Safety Review with clinical professionals and produce a Clinical Safety Case Report and Hazard Log. The clinical risk is monitored and laid out in the Hazard Log. A flow chart of hazard mitigation and response is available which outlines how issues will be addressed together with target response times. 

Our target response time for urgent issues is 24 hours, for high priority issues 72 hours, medium priority 7 working days and low priority 14 working days.

Our Clinical Safety Officer is Dr Nihara Krause.

stem4 consistently monitors user feedback via emails, social media and reviews on the App Store/Google Play. Combined Minds is reviewed on a quarterly basis during which app efficacy, including the efficacy of the activities, is reviewed, and the app updated as necessary to ensure it is clinically valid.

Combined Minds is reviewed every three months and updated as required.

We do not collect any personal information, that is any information that could allow you to be identified as an individual. We do collect some anonymous or non-personally identifiable information (non-PII) – this is data that cannot be used on its own to track, or identify a person.  The non-PII data that we can collect, if you agree to share this with us, is year of birth, county, borough (if county Greater London/London selected), gender, ethnicity, and whether a young person is currently receiving treatment or advice for their condition from a health professional. This information is used to help us develop our Apps and understand basic information on who is using the App.

It is important to know that you do not have to share any information about yourself, and you can still use the whole App without telling us anything that you don’t want to share.

You can read our full Privacy Policy here.

stem4 apps do not create user accounts. This was based on user research, with young people telling us they valued privacy. This does mean that if you delete the app or change your device, that any app data will be lost.

To report an issue with the app please email combinedminds@stem4.org.uk providing as many details about the issue as you can. stem4 endeavours to respond to you according to our target response times. We assess and record any clinical risk. We review the app quarterly and make updates where necessary.

We will resolve major bugs that prevent the intended app functionality from working for devices and operating systems supported.

Please note that Combined Minds provides suggestions to support a young person’s mental health but is not a substitute for treatment. Please support the young person to contact their GP or inform a responsible adult. If you are a parent/carer please seek the support of your GP.

1 in 4 people may suffer from impact on their mental health. If you feel that your own mental health is affected, please follow some of the instructions yourself and contact the signposts in the app or a health professional such as your GP.

stem4 does not offer a counselling service. For any concerns please contact a GP and also the signposts in the app. In an emergency please contact 111 or 999.

“An educative app that empowers families and friends who want to support young people with common mental health difficulties but do not always know how – offers easy-to-implement guidance that focuses on building upon the young person’s strengths, whilst also providing important suggestions for how families and friends can look after themselves in the process.”

Dr Sophie Andrews, Clinical Psychologist

Combined Minds is ORCHA approved with a rating of 81% (iOS) and 81% (Android).