Mental Health Conversation

Inspiration

It's not uncommon for college students to experience anxiety and depression, but it's yet to shake off its stigma and become a comfortable conversation. Some people pretend it doesn't affect them while others are too paralyzed by it to do anything at all. Going to Counseling Services for therapy or medication can feel stressful or shameful at first, so we brought a taste of these resources to students who might not be ready to reach out.

What it does

Mental Health Conversation is a digital platform for Mount Holyoke students that offers advice, resources and a private space to express their feelings. We've included several topics that resonate with our team members and collected research about the topics themselves, their symptoms and some quick tips to fight those difficult demons. If users felt comfortable asking for more help or needed more assistance, we also included Mount Holyoke Counseling Services information.

How we built it

We initially discussed content, and then delved into the data structures we could use to create our internal map of buttons and links. We focused a lot on the visual appearance of our applet, aiming to make it as approachable and soothing as possible to the viewer.

Challenges we ran into

We initially attempted to create our program on Atom in Java using Swing and JPanels/JButtons etc. However, we ran into countless roadblocks trying to get the GUI to display correctly and eventually switched over to BlueJ, which is more user-friendly when it comes to GUI objects.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We made something that works and looks very nice!

What we learned

Things don't always turn out how you planned, therefore lots of forethought is very important. The way we initially approached implementing our program was too complex and involved too much information that we did not know how to use well (namely Swing and GUI in Java). Once we switched to BlueJ, something (Amelia) is very comfortable with, the process went much more smoothly.

What's next for Mental Health Conversation

Moving forward, we're hoping to improve and better organize our code. We also would like to implement the research we collected into the platform for users to view in a visually calming environment. We plan to expand our mental health topics past the two we have available and expand our user base to people who deal with issues such as social anxiety, suicidal thoughts, or imposter syndrome. We really wanted to have an option for users to vent and express their uncensored feelings in an empty text box as an emotional outlet but wasn't able to get it working in time. Adding in an interactive questionnaire so users could better identify what they're experiencing and why is another idea we hope to expand upon in the future. We are very invested in our project and would love to see it grow and spread acceptance, positivity, and hope!

Built With

• bluej
• java