Inspiration
In this current state, there are many of us that are in a negative mindset due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While self-isolation is great for the pandemic, it can be jarring and scary for those of us who were very socially active prior. On social media, there is a big focus on prioritizing one's mental health to ensure their wellbeing. Similarly, we want to create a space where teens and young adults can feel safe visiting virtually to find resources for themselves.
What it does
For now, our web app provides two categories: physical/non-physical resources and a map of locations for different kinds of services. The physical/non-physical resources category is meant to be a list of hotlines the user can call depending on what advice they're seeking. The map is a geographical layout of places the user can go to for early serious mental illness treatment and it allows the user to find the nearest one to their location.
How we built it
We retrieved our data from the Full Directory of Mental Health Programs tab of the New York State website, which was downloadable as an Excel file, and saved it as a .csv file. We used MongoDB to aggregate our data and put it into a usable database. Next, we wrote an HTML file for the map we wanted to display on our web app and wrote out what information we want to display about each location.
Challenges we ran into
A common constraint was time, as a team, we wanted to incorporate more ideas into this web app, but due to the time constraint of 24 hours, we managed to accomplish the two categories we have now. Another challenge was narrowing down the scope of the locations, all teammates are located in a different place, so we decided to just focus on Stony Brook, where the hackathon was taking place virtually. However, when obtaining our data from the New York State government website, there were only two locations listed, so we had to broaden our scope to New York.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We got started late into the 24 hours due to time differences and for one of our members, it was her first hackathon so it was challenging to dole our tasks fairly while also keeping everyone's skill set in mind. However,
What we learned
It's important to talk about everyone's skillset more in-depth before the hackathon starts so that way, there are no surprises down the road on who can handle what bump in the road.
What's next for Recover Together
Fully flesh out the map and add more tabs of information to it that are related to mental health services that can aid others going through a tough time as well.
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