MIAHY

Inspiration

In this unprecedented time with the spread of the coronavirus and the official lockdown in the country, many issues have emerged and are now priorities. As we learn and adapt to address them, mental wellness is often a neglected aspect of health. In a country where mental health is still considered as a taboo, only a few initiatives are in place to address it. But in times where mental health problems such as anxiety and stress are at their highest, one of the main factors being the lockdown, it is crucial to introduce each individual to the basics of mental wellness. An additional challenge is to find appropriate content contextualized to the need of the Malagasy population. In order to solve and mitigate the current issue, our solution is to create an online "Messenger Chatbot" that will handle discussions with the user automatically. Why "a chatbot" not another alternative solution? Based on Malagasy people's habit, the affordability to buy a Facebook bundle or even accessing Facebook is almost free; that is why we thought that a "Messenger Chatbot" will be the fastest and easiest way to reach out to local users.

What it does

The chatbot will act as an emotional assistant for the users. On one hand, it will allow the users to do elf check-ins to help identify their emotions in the current situation. On the other hand, the chatbot will provide exercises which will help users manage their negative thoughts. Those exercises will be based on CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) which is a method to lead people to see difficulties as opportunities through working with their negative thoughts. Additionally, the features of the Chatbot will include wellness content such as daily positive quotes, or contents generating positive vibes and prevent the population from being fear-mongered by the current situation. Even after the pandemic, the chatbot can be redesigned to become a tool used by therapists to check-in with their patients.

How I built it

With the help of the Facebook guidelines to create a messenger bot, we followed the step by step tutorial in order to set the webhook for our messenger bot. Now, I have to set the discussion logic and include the Mental Health content to boost people's positivity and surround them with good vibes.

Challenges I ran into

Since we are not experienced with chatbot creation or either NLP, It was and still a big challenge to create something that you have no experience with. Additionally, since we don’t have a mental health expert in CBT, we still need our existing contents to get approved by a professional.

What I learned

First, we have learned about setting webhooks and how it works basically. We learned how to deploy my first application (the webhook) with Heroku which we have never done before. Second, we learned a lot more about CBT through secondary research (online and book readings). But mostly, we learned that we should never give up even though adversity might be hard.

What's next for MIAHY

Developing the chatbot is still in progress. Our next step involves partnering up with local mental health workers to work with us and validate the content that is going to be shared with the users through the chatbot and the facebook page attached to it.