Mental health apps nowadays promise everything: insight, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and even healing. How can just a few taps make all of this happen?

As a therapist, I approach these tools with healthy skepticism. I know for sure that some mental health apps can make a real change. Others, in the meantime, create the illusion of self-care without actually helping people and can even deceive them.

In this review, I’m looking at Breeze Wellbeing through a clinical lens. Not as a replacement for therapy, but as a potential support for those who need extra support or cannot afford therapy for numerous reasons.

7 Features of The Breeze App Ranked by Clinical Usefulness

The Breeze app is a self-discovery app that is called the most comprehensive on the market, thanks to the variety of features. Although the app has an impressive 11+ million downloads and 4.0+ ranking, I approach my review differently.

When evaluating a mental health app, I don’t look at how many features it has. That’s why I will analyze whether the features of Breeze Mental Health are of good quality. I will rank the features based on the following criteria:

  • Are they based on frameworks from psychology, psychiatry, social work, etc.?
  • Can these features be successfully used in combination with therapy?
  • Can independent use of these features harm the user?

1. Tests to Boost Self-Awareness

From a clinical standpoint, this is one of the strongest features of the app.

Self-discovery quizzes can be genuinely helpful when they are framed as exploratory, not diagnostic tools. I appreciate that every quiz in the Breeze app has a disclaimer that only a specialised mental health professional can provide conclusive results.

Now, let’s look at whether the Breeze’s quizzes are evidence-based at all. I looked at the main ones and here are my results:

Test Proven Frameworks It’s Based on Therapist-Approved?
Childhood trauma Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Yes
Emotional intelligence Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT)

The Schutte Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test (SSEIT)

 Yes
ADHD evaluation The Adult ADHD Self-Reporting Scale (ASRS) Yes (a formal assessment is still needed for official diagnosis)
OCD assessment Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS)

Dimensional Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (DOCS)

OCI-R – Obsessional Compulsive Inventory

 Yes, if a mental health professional confirms results
Personality type The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Depends. The framework is highly subjective. Doesn’t have many practical applications, but can be beneficial for self-exploration.

Finally, I didn’t find any deception in the evaluation. As far as I am concerned, the app has done everything to reduce the harm of independent use through disclaimers and giving practical insights on how to treat results.

2. Journaling

Journaling is one of the most clinically supported self-help practices, and it’s something I always advise my clients if they have the capacity. Journaling is straightforward: you need something to write (type) with and a couple of minutes. There aren’t many ways to improve this practice, so here’s what Breeze Wellbeing tried to do.

The biggest benefit of journaling is that it offers their guided prompts that focus on three areas: releasing anxiety, gratitude, and soothing after stressful days. I find this a fantastic opportunity for beginners in journaling, who have blank page anxiety.

Another benefit is that trying Breeze’s journaling won’t hurt. There are a few risks to independent use. That’s why so many therapists offer journaling as homework to their clients.

3. Mood Tracker and Analytics

As a therapist, I cannot be indifferent to mood trackers. I love it when my clients come into a session prepared, knowing what triggered them last week. But apart from my subjective respect for mood trackers, how does Breeze Mental Health implement them in their app?

Firstly, there is a great balance between the variety of emotions a user can choose, without overwhelming them with the emotions wheel. Mood tracker in Breeze Wellbeing can also be great for boosting self-awareness: a person knows their feelings, their frequency, triggers, and 99drivers, and can manage them on their own.

I’ve already partially reviewed the clinical usefulness of mood trackers and analytics. A study showed that using mood trackers on mobile phones helps mental health specialists in adjusting treatment plans for patients with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder.

One tip for therapists, if you’re going to try Breeze’s mood tracker (or any mood tracker): Analytics are most helpful when reviewed periodically rather than obsessively. Tracking should support insight, not reinforce self-monitoring anxiety.

4. Routine Builder

Now we’re at the equator of our review. I ranked the routine builder feature in the Breeze app as fourth because it’s still an effective way to support mental health, but not for everybody.

In therapy, we often use behavioral activation: doing manageable actions even when motivation is low. The routine feature can be used perfectly for this aim. For example, a user breaks habits into realistic steps and reminders in the Breeze Wellbeing app, making sure these tiny steps aren’t lost in routine problems.

Sounds good, but we don’t live in a perfect world. People with depression, ADHD, anxiety, or other neurodevelopmental conditions might struggle with even the tiniest steps. There are also perfectionistic people who might self-blame if they skip one or two steps.

That’s why flexibility matters the most when using routine builders. Routines should adapt to energy levels, not punish inconsistency.

5. Affirmations

I really love affirmations and believe that they can be really effective for boosting self-esteem. I only ranked it fifth because other features are more straightforward, while affirmations require more nuance and a certain level of self-awareness.

From a clinical standpoint, affirmations work best when they are believable and based on cognitive reframing. On the day of writing this article, I got “You are creating a life that brings you joy.” Although it’s a nice message, a person should really think about it and reflect on their life and past so that this message sticks.

Affirmations can be used independently if they are more grounded, like focusing on everyday activities. The affirmations offered by Breeze Mental Health are for more advanced users, in my opinion.

6. Games for Unwinding Anxiety

Relaxing games can play a supportive role in mental health. From my professional perspective, these games will work only if a person wants to play them and doesn’t treat them as a chore. One of the potential drawbacks of relaxing games is that they may distract a person from feelings they don’t want to go through.

Let’s be honest: relaxing games in the Breeze app indeed relax. If I were to choose screen time on social media or with Breeze’s relaxing games, I’d choose the latter without hesitation. They do indeed have a relaxing effect on the nervous system, especially the Mindful breathing game.

The potential pitfall is avoidance. If relaxing games become a way to escape uncomfortable emotions rather than process them, their therapeutic value decreases. As with many features in mental health apps, their effectiveness depends on timing and intentional use rather than frequency.

7. Social Feature

The social feature is the least clinically impactful element of Breeze Wellbeing for me. Though it can still serve a purpose for some users.

From a therapeutic lens, community spaces can reduce feelings of isolation and normalize emotional experiences. Seeing that others struggle with similar thoughts can be reassuring, especially for people who feel alone in their mental health journey.

That said, social media was created with the same intentions, and it totally backfired. The urge to share such personal things as results of psychological tests might be driven by comparison, misinformation, or emotional overexposure.

In therapy, we’re careful about how much external input someone consumes while they’re building self-awareness. This feature is best used lightly and selectively, with clear boundaries around what feels supportive versus overwhelming.

Tips to Use Breeze Mental Health to Support Therapy

As we’ve seen, many features in the Breeze app are indeed evidence-based. And as I was reviewing the app, I couldn’t help but think how good it’d be for my clients.

So, if you’re searching for ways to complement therapy and maximize its outcomes, here are some ideas I came up with.

  • Use journaling as therapy homework

Instead of journaling randomly, write about your current topics in therapy. Many therapists already assign such “homework” to their clients to help them describe their values, reasons for staying or leaving a certain workplace, and triggers that provoked emotional intensity over the last week.

Writing between sessions helps keep therapeutic insights active and reduces the “I forgot what I wanted to talk about” feeling when the next session begins.

  • Track symptoms and context

Mood data is most useful when paired with context. Alongside simply choosing an emotion, describe what happened that day. Insights about sleep, amount of movement, workload, and people you met with are especially useful.

  • Use routines to test behavioral changes

Think of routines as small experiments rather than an “I want to change my life” approach. For example, try skipping coffee for breakfast for one week and observe its impact on mood or energy. Share it with your therapists to confirm or debunk certain hypotheses you had about your emotional well-being.

  • Practice mindful relaxation between sessions

Relaxing features can help regulate your nervous system after emotionally heavy sessions. Here’s where Breeze Wellbeing’s relaxing games really come in handy.

  • Track progress over weeks, not days

Mental health journey is dynamic and never linear. Reviewing weekly or monthly progress can actually discourage because there’ll be too few insights or improvements can be negligible. But think about it: Is writing one sentence a day a lot? No, but if you write one sentence every day, you’ll have a whole book ready in a year.

Progress might not show up as statistics in the Breeze app, but it shows up as faster recovery, better awareness, or even sleeping through the night.

Final Words from Therapist

Shortly put: Breeze Wellbeing is therapist-approved. But it’s important to be clear about what this app is and what it isn’t. It’s a tool, not a cure. No app can replace therapy, human relationships, or deeper self-work on its own.

The people who benefit most from the app are those who approach it with honesty and a “progress over perfection” mindset. The best outcome would be a combination of trying Breeze with therapy. This way, any potential dangers of independent use come to zero, and a qualified therapist will guide a healthy behavior change.