Soothe

Context

Online media has become a coping mechanism for those burdened with mental issues. Watching funny videos, viewing beautiful artworks, or contacting loved ones. But heavy usage of social media has heightened the risk of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and suicidal thoughts.

Without proper safeguards, social media promotes negative experiences, feelings of inadequacy, and triggering content.

Competitive analysis

Censorship apps only filter data without centralizing media catered to give the user comfort, and available mental health apps do not estimate a nuanced and proactive approach to mentally-ill users. For optimal functioning, these apps would require constant and tedious upkeep.

Problem

With all these problems, how can people find comfort in the digital space without risking their mental health online?

Solution

Introducing Soothe.

A mental-support app that compiles soothing media and easy access to friends, and emergency hotlines, personalized to the user's comfort preferences, all while requiring minimum mental energy.

Features

The app syncs with social media accounts and other apps to cater its content to you. You can link contacts from other messaging apps and provide a list of triggers that the app should avoid. You also input how many hour intervals the app should ask for your mood.

The Recommendations tab presents media based on linked accounts, where you swipe right if it brings comfort or left if it doesn’t.

The Dashboard uses data provided by the Recommendations tab to provide media catered to comfort you. You can also add media to personalized albums you create.

The Contacts tab centralizes your loved ones’ contacts on messaging apps.

The Profile tab shows your mood tracker, graph of your recorded mood throughout the week.

If the app tracks a consistently low mood, it will recommend comfort media via notification or direct you to contact a loved one or an emergency mental health hotline.

Value proposition

Soothe offers a sense of relief and comfort to users struggling with their mental health through: (1) providing a safe online space, free of potential triggering content, (2) streamlining coping mechanisms that users can easily resort to, and (3) personalizing support systems based on user preferences.