Skip to content

Home

Jump to bottom
Xiaole Zeng (Charlotte) edited this page Jun 21, 2020 · 2 revisions

Welcome to the defhack-2020 wiki!

MENTAL WELLBEING

The past few months those people have been faced with the challenge of isolating themselves away from friends and distant relatives. With people being constantly locked inside of the house there has been an increase in alcohol sales by 22%1, domestic violence rising by 25%2, and a surge in suicide attempts by 33%4. For people who are in a situation where they are facing trauma or are suffering from depression and may not be in a situation that provides them with a place to broadcast their feelings or reveal their emotions to someone close to them.

With our application we hope to Reach out to those with varying levels of depression to help them get counseling. Instead of those who are unmotivated to reach out constantly to a counselor, we will provide them with a platform that monitors their health and provides them with a means to reach out to the necessary help. For example, after the user sign’s up for the app they are prompted to take a survey. In most Psychiatric offices they use a series of psychiatric screening tools that they use to determine the patient’s mental health. A screening tool is different from an assessment because it does not require physical tests such as blood level checks or EEG’s. Although that may seem like a setback, we use this as an advantage to get a starting point for most patients who may not be able to take a mental health physical. Also, as stated in this article on understanding health screenings, screening tools identify the possible tools they state that “ administering assessments would be illogical and time consuming”5. By getting an initial idea of what their mental health is through screening we may continue to help them through various means. When observing the best way to help our consumers we must look at previous studies that help us understand why people may reach out for alternatives to a counselor. In a study conducted by the department of Public Health, they analyzed the success of peer support specialist’s comparative to the mental health care specialist’s sole treatment. Peer support specialists are people who have had a similar experience to the people that they are treating and are trained to act as role models for their patients. With a group of 42 individuals interviewed over the course of 6 months the department of public health concluded that both sole counseling and peer counseling have their benefits. However, one of the main advantages was the advisory aspect. The peer support group is a place to lay out one’s feelings of discomfort and change the modify things they dislike without being judged. As one peer support specialist states “Ideally it [is] a progression where the person can speak up and have their voice heard”. This is what we hoped to do with our app.

The combination of peer support groups and psychiatrists is a rare one and often expensive. For 60% of US counties there are no psychiatrists and 71 billion dollars have been spent on depression treatments. And this is not limited to the US. In Korea, seeing a psychiatrist is often viewed as taboo where 5.7% of the adult population were not able to seek treatment due to a lack of mental health services. Also if we look at the LGBTQIA community they also have their own set of taboos and may be denied service in some places due to their sexuality. Low treatment rates may be attributed to reasons that are on a spectrum, varying from person to person. One new way that companies are trying to resolve this is using mental health apps which are a way to connect with health providers digitally. Instead of a person being limited to their geography they would be allowed to have a provider near to them. With some apps offering lower rates than in-person visits consumers are drawn to install services such as BetterHelp on their phone. They also come with their own set of drawbacks. On the market now there are almost 10,000 mental health apps available for a wide range of services. However, there is no app that can do everything. In a clinical review of how users interact with apps, clinicians recognize how smartphone technology has penetrated the industry. With 80% of households owning a tablet device there an ease of access for everyone however every individual has different needs. While clinicians agree e-health will become the new norm they have to consider the harder cases who need extra help with services such as the aforementioned peer-support groups.8

With our app we plan to solve the problem previous health apps could not. By connecting our users to a group of people who are going through a similar experience as them they can find their voice. Also, with another feature of our app they will be able to write down the way that they feel and hopefully in the future, using sentiment analysis we will be able to determine the way that they feel and determine how much help they truly need.

In the mental health app we will provide:

Works Cited

Clone this wiki locally