Military service is notoriously rough on a service member's mental health. According to some estimates, 30 percent of service members develop some type of mental health issue within four months of returning home after deployment.

The military is spending more money than ever to address mental health issues within the ranks, and their latest attempt is a smart phone application called the T2 MoodTracker application, which helps service members keep track of their mental health after deployments.

The app works like a high-tech diary, allowing users to express emotions and behaviors that result from therapy, medication, daily experiences or changes happening at work or in the home.

The smart phone app isn't supposed to be a pocket therapist, though. It serves more as an extremely accurate and timely record of a service member's mental health.

Perry Bosmajian is a psychologist with the National Center for TeleHealth and Technology, where this smart phone app was created. He says this smart phone app will yield much more accurate results on the psychological conditions of service members who have returned home.

"Therapists and physicians often have to rely on patient recall when trying to gather information about symptoms over the previous weeks or months," Bosmajian said. "Research has shown that information collected after the fact, especially about mood, tends to be inaccurate. The best record of an experience is when it's recorded at the time and place it happens."

The app specifically tracks anxiety, depression, general well-being, life stress, post traumatic stress and brain injury. The daily expressions add up over time to produce a trend that can be observed by physicians and therapists.

The app has been downloaded more than 5,000 times since it became available on the Android Market a year ago. The app should be available for iPhone users some time next year.