Inspiration 1/7 mothers experience postpartum depression in the year after giving birth. As women, we wanted to provide new mothers with a resource to help them combat postpartum depression.
What it does: The main features can be broken down into four parts: daily reminders, peer connect network, professional help, and breathing exercises. Each tab is designed to connect mothers with access to resources that they can pursue to best address their concerns.
How we built it: We used JavaScript to code this project. We traversed our array to update the main screen with a new message every 10 seconds to serve as a daily reminder to mothers. These reminders consist of messages mothers may need to hear to recognize the hard work they have accomplished. The peer connect tab serves as a private and public message feature that allows mothers to share and comment on each others journeys to support each other. The professional network tab, shows mothers nearby therapists and mental health resources they can contact. Finally, we used a timer system to develop a breathing exercise that times and guides users to effectively complete breathing exercises.
Challenges we ran into: We found it difficult to create the message system. It took us a while to figure out how to allow a different user to comment/privately message another user. But by debugging and closely analyzing our code we were able to address and fix this issue to enable private messages and public comments.
Accomplishments that we're proud of: We are extremely proud of the daily reminders feature. It provides a boost of positive energy and serves as a helpful reminder to new moms that they are doing a great job.
What we learned: Through completing this project we learned that nothing good comes easy. By working diligently and working together, we were able to best leverage each other's strengths to create a helpful resource for new mothers combating P.P.D.
What's next for EmbraceHer: To grow our initiative further, some next steps include partnering with hospitals that have established P.P.D. resources. This would allow more women to access and use this tool playing a role in slowly reducing the negative implications of P.P.D.
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