Get Help SG

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Inspiration

Mental-health support in Singapore can be difficult to navigate, especially when someone is already overwhelmed. People may not know whether they need urgent support, a public healthcare pathway, a private psychiatrist, a psychologist, or counselling.

Get Help SG was inspired by the need for a calmer, more practical starting point: a tool that helps people describe what they need and guides them towards relevant Singapore-based resources without requiring them to understand the healthcare system first.

What it does

Get Help SG is a Singapore-only mental-health wayfinding tool.

Users begin by answering a simple question: “How are you feeling today?” The guided flow then asks what kind of support they want, such as:

• Free or low-cost resources
• Public mental healthcare
• Private mental healthcare
• Private psychiatry
• Private psychology, counselling, or therapy

The app also asks about the user’s situation and groups private providers by region and neighbourhood. Listings can include clinic addresses, session fees, opening hours, booking methods, contact details, and source links. Users can shortlist providers for later comparison.

The tool is designed for navigation rather than diagnosis. Urgent-help information remains visible, and users are directed to appropriate crisis and emergency resources when necessary.

How we built it

We built the project as a responsive web application with a guided, state-based interface. The experience uses structured questions and deterministic recommendation rules so that the flow is predictable and privacy-conscious.

The provider directory was assembled from publicly available clinic websites, professional directories, medical resources, and other public listings. We standardised regions and neighbourhood groupings across psychiatry, psychology, counselling, and therapy listings.

Codex accelerated the project by helping us:

• Turn the initial idea into a working product structure
• Implement the guided triage flow and provider finder
• Refine the visual design, responsive layout, and copy
• Add and revise provider directory data
• Identify inconsistencies in addresses and regional classifications
• Prepare the project for deployment and public testing
• Create the demonstration video and submission materials

GPT-5.6-family models were used during development as a coding, research, writing, and product-thinking partner. At runtime, visitor answers are handled through deterministic rules and are not sent to an AI service.

Challenges we ran into

The largest challenge was making the provider directory useful without overstating its completeness or accuracy. Clinic information changes frequently, and fees, opening hours, addresses, provider availability, and booking methods are not always published consistently.

We also had to resolve ambiguous geographical classifications. For example, locations such as Novena and Bukit Timah can be described differently depending on the source. We created a consistent regional system and grouped providers by neighbourhood to make the results easier to understand.

Another challenge was balancing helpfulness with safety. The app needed to feel welcoming and simple while clearly communicating that it is not a diagnostic or emergency-care service. We kept urgent-help pathways visible without making the entire experience feel alarmist.

The last challenge was ensuring that the data that was scraped was accurate, so we did the checks manually.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have turned a broad and emotionally difficult problem into a focused, usable experience that people can begin with in one sentence.

The project combines:

• A low-friction conversational entry point
• Clear, non-diagnostic triage
• Singapore-specific public and private resources
• Region and neighbourhood-based provider discovery
• Detailed clinic information
• Shortlisting for later comparison
• Privacy-conscious deterministic recommendations
• Persistent access to urgent-help information

We are also proud that the application is publicly deployed, has a public MIT-licensed repository, and can be tested through a live demo.

What we learned

We learned that mental-health navigation is as much an information-design problem as it is a healthcare problem. People need clear explanations, transparent next steps, and confidence that the information is relevant to their location and situation.

We also learned that directory quality requires continuous maintenance. A useful resource finder should show when information was verified, link directly to its sources, and make it easy for users to confirm details before booking.

From the development process, we learned how much faster product iteration becomes when design, copy, engineering, research, and testing happen together. Codex helped us move quickly from rough ideas to implementation while still allowing us to make deliberate decisions about safety, privacy, and usability.

What's next for Get Help SG

Our next priority is to make the directory more maintainable and trustworthy. We would like to add:

• Clear verification dates and source-confidence indicators
• A provider correction and update workflow
• Better filtering by fees, availability, modality, and accessibility
• Support for online and in-person appointments
• More comprehensive coverage of Singapore providers
• Better pathways for youth, caregivers, LGBTQ+ users, and multilingual communities
• Accessibility improvements, including screen-reader and language support
• Analytics that measure usefulness without collecting sensitive personal information

Longer term, Get Help SG could become a maintained public-interest directory and navigation layer for Singapore’s mental-health ecosystem.

Built With

• accessibility
• cloudflare-workers
• drizzle-orm
• github
• gpt-5.6
• healthcare-navigation
• mental-health
• next.js
• node.js
• openai-codex
• privacy-by-design
• react
• responsive-web-design
• singapore
• tailwind-css
• typescript
• vite