Liam Reilly (lireilly2@ursinus.edu)
Sean McGinley (semcginley@ursinus.edu)
The mental health and wellbeing of young college students as they prepare for later life has come into the spotlight in the Covid-19 pandemic. Here at Ursinus, the Wellness Center has tried a variety of different techniques aimed at addressing problems regarding students’ mental and spiritual health. Some of the strategies attempted already include events for students to meet with therapy dogs, participate in desk yoga, or engage in conversations about imposter syndrome. The newest initiative by the Wellness Center to deal with this issue comes in the form of a subscription for an app called Fabulous, which is aimed at helping users achieve various mental health goals.
The Fabulous app is driven by science-backed approaches to habit and routine building and is provided through a free subscription available through your Ursinus email. A downloadable link with additional instruction can be found in an email from Katie Bean, Director of Prevention and Advocacy. For those struggling with issues such as burnout or commitment, the coaching sessions provide users with strategies and advice on navigating those mental roadblocks. For those seeking healthier lifestyles, whether it be increasing exercise, nutrition, flexibility, or mental clarity, students should seek the guided offerings of this app. For students wanting to commit to longer goals to build better habits, multi-week journeys are offered to gradually increase one’s progress in a particular achievement. Even those seeking just minimal habit changes such as a random act of kindness can find usefulness in the global and self-driven challenges.
The approach of this app is building tangible, small goals to establish better habits going forward. As a given user continues to utilize the app over time, the app will suggest more healthy habits for that given user to follow in a strategy called “habit-stacking.” For those worried about the app’s credibility, Iman Balagam of Healthline says that, “Fabulous consulted with top researchers to create these sessions, and they regularly update them with new insights from scientific studies.” Of course, such praise does not make the app perfect and users have reported issues specifically with both the notification system being too lenient and the healthy eating portion of the app not providing enough diverse options for different types of people. As such, for those struggling with mental health, this app should probably be used in accordance with other, more widely known mental health strategies.
This application for most is not going to be the only resource needed to address mental health changes. Taking care of one’s mental health is an ever-evolving process unique to each individual. The benefits of this app for one person may be viewed as useful for another. This app seeks to provide the resources to deal with that adaptability through small, tangible goals and habit building. Wellness and external therapy, support systems, other resources, etc. all provide additional ways of addressing mental and physical health that this app simply does not. By utilizing a service such as this combined with the other resources that Ursinus provides, students are better equipped to deal with their own mental, physical, and spiritual health. Students should consider this app as a meaningful start or addition to this journey.
Works Cited:
Balagam, Iman. “Should You Give Fabulous a Try?” Healthline, Healthline Media, 11 Jan. 2022, https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/fabulous-app-review#takeaway.