About Community Stress First Aid
Community Stress First Aid is a reference app. It holds seven sections of guidance — Suicide Intervention: ACE, the Crisis Referral Path, the Stress Continuum, the Stress First Aid Model, Stress Indicators, Actions To Help, and More Resources — and it is built for the situation where somebody opens it because a friend, a colleague or a family member is in trouble right now. Two buttons sit above everything else on the home screen: 9-1-1, and call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Every phone number inside the guidance is tappable too.
It pays you nothing. There are no coins in it, no balance, no redeem screen and no PayPal cash-out, and that is worth saying plainly on a site where four apps do all of those things. It also carries no advertising at all, which not even the game can say — there is no ad SDK in the binary, nothing to buy, no subscription and no account to create.
It collects nothing either. No analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising identifier, no server and no storage: its App Store privacy label reads Data Not Collected, which is a thing you can check on the product page rather than a thing we are asking you to believe. That is a decision rather than an oversight. The app contains a screen that asks “are you thinking about killing yourself?”, and an install identifier attached to the fact that somebody opened it is not data worth having. It has its own privacy policy, separate from the one covering our reward apps, because that one discloses ad networks this app does not contain.
The four sections that grade a situation all run on the same four-step scale. The Stress Continuum calls the steps Ready, Reacting, Injured and Ill; the Crisis Referral Path calls them Mild, Moderate, Urgent and Critical. They are the same four steps under two vocabularies, tied together in the old app by nothing more than a shared set of background colors, and the rebuild made that relationship explicit so that green cannot come to mean two different things on two screens.
This app has been on the App Store since 23 September 2011. Version 3.0.0, released 27 August 2026, is a rebuild rather than an update: the previous version dated from March 2018, and its content still listed 1-800-273-8255 as the suicide hotline — a number replaced by 988 in July 2022. Nothing about a stale phone number makes an app crash or a test fail, which is exactly how it sat there for four years. Every number and link in the app was re-checked against the publishing organization’s own site on 22 August 2026, and the app prints that verification date at the foot of its home screen so you can see how old the answer is.
It is not a substitute for professional care, and it does not present itself as one. The guidance is a community resource; it is not a replacement for the professional judgment of leaders and clinicians, or for indicated clinical care. If you are in immediate danger, the number is 9-1-1.
Screenshots
How to use it in the moment
- Open the app. The two crisis buttons are the first things on the screen, above everything else — 9-1-1, and call or text 988.
- If you are helping someone who may be suicidal, go to Suicide Intervention: ACE. Ask, Care, Escort, in that order, with the exact questions to ask.
- If you are not sure how serious it is, open the Crisis Referral Path. It sorts situations into Critical, Urgent, Moderate and Mild, with the resources for each.
- Tap any phone number in the guidance to dial it, or any web address to open it in Safari.
- Use the Stress Continuum and Stress Indicators later, when nothing is on fire — they are the part worth reading before you need them.
Features
- 9-1-1 and the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at the top of the home screen, one tap from opening the app
- The Veterans Crisis Line: dial 988 then press 1, or text 838255
- Suicide Intervention: the ACE model — Ask, Care, Escort — with the questions to ask written out
- A Crisis Referral Path sorting situations into Critical, Urgent, Moderate and Mild, each with its own resources
- The Stress Continuum and the Stress First Aid Model, as text rather than pictures of tables, so they scale with your chosen text size
- Every phone number tappable, and every text shortcode sent as a text rather than dialed
- All of the guidance bundled in the app, so it reads with no signal
- No advertising, no in-app purchases and no subscription
- No account, no sign-up and no server
- An App Store privacy label reading Data Not Collected, with no third-party SDKs disclosed
Frequently asked questions
Does this app pay me anything?
No. This is the thing to know if you got here from anywhere else on this site: Community Stress First Aid has no coins, no balance and no cash-out, and none of the payout arithmetic on the rest of these pages applies to it. It's a reference app, not a reward app. The four that pay are on our apps page.
Is it free? What is the catch?
It's free and there isn't one. No purchase, no subscription, no in-app purchases, and — unlike everything else we publish — no advertising of any kind. There's no ad SDK in the binary at all. The four reward apps are funded by advertising and this one is funded by nothing; it costs us a little to keep on the store and that's the whole arrangement.
What does it collect about me?
Nothing. No analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising identifier, no account, no server and no local storage of what you read. The App Store privacy label says Data Not Collected, and you can read that on the product page without taking our word for it. There's more detail in this app's own privacy policy, which is separate from the one covering our reward apps because that one discloses ad networks this app doesn't contain.
Does it work without a signal?
The guidance does. All of the content is bundled inside the app rather than fetched, so every screen reads with the phone in airplane mode. What needs service is the part that leaves the app: dialing a number, sending a text, or opening one of the web links in Safari.
Is this a replacement for professional help?
No, and the app says so on its own home screen. It's a community resource. It is not a replacement for the professional judgment of leaders and clinicians, or for indicated clinical care, and it should not be used instead of seeking professional help. The links in it are not an endorsement of the sites they point to. If somebody is in immediate danger, call 9-1-1.
Which crisis numbers are in it, and how current are they?
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text, with chat at chat.988lifeline.org. The Veterans Crisis Line, which is 988 then press 1, or a text to 838255. RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline, the National Domestic Violence Hotline, Vets4Warriors, the Vet Center and Military OneSource. All of them were checked against each organization's own site on 22 August 2026, and the app prints that date at the bottom of its home screen — the previous version shipped a hotline number that had been replaced four years earlier, which is the reason the date is now on the screen at all.
Why does the App Store list it under Education?
Because that's the primary category on the listing, with Health & Fitness second. This page prints the second one, since the content is health guidance and "Education" next to Daily: Learn and Earn would read as a quiz app. Both are on the store listing, and neither is wrong.
What do I need to run it?
An iPhone or iPad on iOS 15.0 or later. It's rated 12+ — it was 17+ until August 2026, which came from a 2011 setting declaring unrestricted web access. The app has no built-in browser: it opens a handful of fixed links in Safari, so 17+ was describing something that was never there.
Is there an Android version?
No. This one is iPhone and iPad only, and there's no Play listing to point you at. Two of the six things we publish are on Google Play — Daily: Learn and Earn and Taco Rain.
It says Stress Aid on my home screen. Is that the same app?
Yes. The store listing is "Community Stress First Aid" and the icon says "Stress Aid", because the full name doesn't fit under an icon. That mismatch predates this rebuild and was kept deliberately, along with the listing itself — renaming the bundle would have orphaned every install going back to 2011.
