Pressures: Men's Mental Health

Logo
Memorialization Page
Home Page
Pressures Page
Resources

Inspiration

Men's mental health is often overlooked. Many men feel pressure to stay quiet, act strong, or hide what they're going through. Pressures was built as a way to show that silence: anonymously, safely, and honestly. We wanted to create a space where these thoughts can be seen, not judged, and where people can realize they're not the only ones carrying these feelings.

What it does

Pressures is a web experience where users can scroll through anonymous emotional fragments and mark which ones resonate with them. The goal is simple: to help someone feel less alone by showing them that many people share similar pressures, fears, and struggles.

How we built it

We built pressures using Vite, React, and standard web technologies. The structure is fully component-based, with multiple pages (Home, Pressures, Learn, Help, Memorial) and local storage tracking to let users mark which fragments resonate with them. We also added a global "estimated attempts"counter to highlight the urgency of men's mental health in a respectful, non-graphic way.

Challenges we ran into

A lot of technical challenges, obviously, like broken UI sections, timer bugs, and layout inconsistencies. These were things we could debug and fix.

The hardest part, however, wasn't coding; it was research and the emotional weight behind the project.

While working, one of us said: "It's crazy to think people like us struggle so hard they feel like suicide is the only option."

Working on this project wasn't even just programming. Reading real messages, seeing real statistics, and actually having to understand what people carry was heavy. Throughout the process had to spend a lot of time grounding ourselves and talking about the emotional aspect of building something like this. It wasn't sunshine and rainbows, especially when we realized that the time on that memorial page isn't just a number in code; every increment was meant to represent an actual human being, and it was genuinely so unsettling and depressing.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of the details:

-creating a uniform design across multiple pages

-getting hover and highlight states working smoothly

-implementing the “This resonates with me” system

-making the app feel cohesive on mobile

-turning a serious topic into something respectful, gentle, and useful

Even small touches mattered, because we wanted the experience to feel intentional.

What we learned

We learned how to design multi-page sites that feel consistent, clean, and emotionally accessible. We also learned how important tone, wording, and safety considerations are when working with mental health topics. It pushed us to think not only as developers, but as humans trying to create something that doesn’t harm people.

What's next for Pressures: Men's Mental Health

Long-term, we would love to expand Pressures into a real, safe community space. No usernames, no profile, just an anonymous place where people can submit what they’re going through, and others can scroll, resonate, and feel understood.

Some future goals include:

-allowing anonymous submissions

-using AI to auto-tag and categorize messages

-expanding the educational resources

-adding more grounding techniques and help options

-creating a larger, searchable library of pressures (similar to The Unsent Project, but for men)

As heavy as this topic is, these messages represent real people who feel these things. If Pressures can help even one person feel less alone or reach out for help, then the project is already worth it.