Reach Mental Health

Inspiration: Our group wanted to create something to improve healthcare. Through discussion, we came to the conclusion that often times an overlooked aspect of healthcare is the emotional side that might not be met by visiting a doctor. We thought giving those with mental health needs a peer or more comfortable environment to discuss with each other would be helpful. We also wanted to make it personalized, so that each person is matched with a chat room specific to their own experiences.

What it does: Our website is a portal to creating customized chat rooms based on the symptoms or problems that they encounter in daily life. Once in the chat room, participants are allowed to put a nickname and chat with others as they wish. Eventually, we would like to include moderators (health professionals) through this chat service. This website also includes a story submission page, where we would receive stories and post them on the website for others to read.

How we built it: Initially, we were going to build the website from scratch by using node.js and HTML/CSS. However, we ended up using SquareSpace and adding some custom HTML due to some difficulties, which are described next.

Challenges we ran into: Initially, we wanted to include the chat service through HTML and Node.JS, but it was hard to get the webpage for the chat to show. We could include a person and send a message, but nothing would show on the screen. Therefore, we had to think of using a different website/platform in order to be able to let users chat with each other.

Accomplishments that we're proud of: Finishing! And the idea that we can create a safe space for those who need it. We liked the idea of creating a small community of those who may not normally be able to get it in real life.

What we learned: Teamwork is important, making a website is hard if you can't code in Node. Some of us learned HTML, some learned how to use GitHub.

What's next for Reach Mental Health: Including health professional moderators, more stories, making a more extensive list of symptoms (hopefully an algorithm to calculate the most similar answers by using a survey).