ORLANDO, Fla. – Mayo Clinic is set to release Anxiety Coach this week. It's a self-help app meant to help people reduce fears and worries ranging from extreme shyness to obsessions and compulsions.
Mayo Clinic says the app is designed for people with any level of anxiety dealing with fears ranging from public speaking to severe anxiety disorders.
The strategies used in Anxiety Coach are based on cognitive behavioral therapy in which people learn to increase their confidence by gradually confronting situations that they have avoided out of fear.
Features of the Mayo Clinic Anxiety Coach a short self-test to measure the severity of fears and worries, a way for people to design a personal plan to target individual fears and worries, as well as a way for people to track anxiety while challenging fears and worries in real-life situations.
Anxiety disorders include panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and phobias (social phobia, agoraphobia, and specific phobia).
About 40 million American adults ages 18 and older suffer from anxiety.
The Mayo Clinic Anxiety Coach App is available for $4.99 on iTunes.