Inspiration: Many people avoid seeking mental health care due to fear of stigma, professional consequences, or lack of privacy. We were inspired to build a platform that lets anyone speak to a validated mental health counselor completely anonymously and without generating any personal history.
What it does: The platform connects users instantly to credentialed mental health counselors through an anonymous interface. No sign-up is required, and no data is stored about the user’s identity. This allows people to access legitimate mental health support in a way that feels safe and stigma-free.
How we built it: We used React and Next.js for the frontend with TailwindCSS for a clean, minimal UI. The backend uses Firebase for lightweight session control (with no PII), and OpenAI’s GPT-4o with LangChain for optional AI triage or conversational support. Credentialed counselors are manually onboarded and verified before being available through the chat interface.
Challenges we ran into
- Verifying counselor credentials while preserving full user anonymity
- Creating a frictionless yet serious interface for vulnerable users
- Ensuring ethical boundaries in both counselor and optional AI responses
Accomplishments that we’re proud of
- Built a judgment-free space that lowers the barrier to seeking mental health care
What we learned
- Designing for privacy from the ground up requires rethinking common UX flows
- Collaboration between real providers and AI needs clear, enforceable boundaries
What’s next
- Expand and create a counselor network
- Add scheduling and “drop-in” models while preserving anonymity
- Implement AI triage that can escalate appropriate cases to human counselors
- Launch anonymous group support sessions and journaling features
Built With
- google-firebase
- html5
- langchain
- next.js
- react
- tailwindcss
- typescript
- vercel