There4U

Mental health, two words which are no longer a taboo, yet rarely taken seriously by society as a whole, despite more than a quarter of Americans suffering from at least one serious disorder. In fact, the recent pandemic only inflated these numbers with increasing cases of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Many services do exist for coping with or treating these disorders if treatable, but then, either they are too expensive or practically useless as has been our experiences coping with our issues. Furthermore, while they claim to be confidential, it is no secret that the information they collect and the records they make are accessible to anyone powerful enough to bypass the illusion of privacy (e.g. the NSA). While society may claim to accept those of us with these disorders, we all know how secretly people look down on us, treat us as inferior and think of us as incapable. You can see it in their eyes – the hidden disgust and contempt masked under the cover of an artificial smile and hollow talks of sympathy.
So, what can someone like a poor debt-ridden student do in order to ensure our privacy and actually get the help we need to cope with their mental health problems. That’s what my team started thinking and finally we came upon a solution – There4U. We introduce There4U, a revolutionary new app, that helps those suffering from mental health disorders while addressing all the complications mentioned above. There4U is completely free (and had no in-app adds, so you know, we want to give the users the best experience possible while helping them), is completely anonymous (yeah, we don’t collect any information at all that can identify you) and provides a close and accepting community of people, whose inspirational words can help you deal with your condition and maybe one day even overcome it. The app comes with many outstanding features which include an inbuilt disorder search to know more about what you are going through, a simple accessible crisis helpline that can connect you with trained professionals 24/7, a community section where you can read about similar stories and last but not the least, find professionals near you who you can turn to for help. This app uses the very latest of technologies to solve a very real problem that we have been dealing with for a very long time. It was built on the MERN stack and uses Google Cloud’s API to execute many of its awesome capabilities. And the best part is, it’s all free and available to anyone who downloads it to their phone. So, I as a member of the team who developed this, highly recommend you try it. We as a team worked for 36 hours straight to deliver a promising user experience and in the process learned a great deal about what application development really involves. We did all this, while consciously resisting the string urge to cut corners or take shortcuts, because in the end, we knew, this app was not just a submission for the Hackathon but our gift to the world as a way to help those like us.

Built With

• google-cloud
• javascript
• mern