Always mind

It's an app whose objective is making mental health accesible, while creating a safe environment for users to talk about issues related to the matter.

The main function of our app is to bring mental health experts closer to people who seek medical attention; it's a platform that will allow users to have virtual appointments with therapists. 

Furthermore, Always mind is here to help people express their feelings regarding mental health, allowing them to have a safe space to talk and open up the conversation about this issue; the app will have a community, where users will be able to write their experiences and thoughts. We will pay close attention to community guidelines to ensure that Always mind is a safe space to speak about one's personal issues.  

We will add a chatbot that users can have a conversation with. As emotions can be very difficult to understand, in case that the AI detects a possible underlying mental health condition it will suggest to redirect the user with an expert. 

In terms of technology, Always mind will be powered with AI in its chatbot option. Once you start receiving therapy, it will also provide historical record of the patient's progress. Lastly, it will have an emergency contacts function for any incidences that might threaten a person's life.

The specific problem is inaccessibility to mental health care. According to the WHO, in Mexico, 1 in 4 people will suffer from at least one mental disorder in their life. In addition the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, states that in 2021 Mexico had 7,896 deaths by suicide, a number that seems to be growing each year. 

And although there are social programs and hotlines that aim to lessen the issue, they are often not promoted, and they are also not enough to help ease the mental health problem, as from the budget of health, only 2% is given to mental health services (the recommended according to the WHO being 5-10%).

But this is not exclusively happening in Mexico: in 2020, only 51% of the 194 WHO Member States reported that their mental health policy or plan was in line with international and regional human rights instruments, well below the 80% target. And only 52% of countries met the target for mental health promotion and prevention programs, also below the 80% target. The only target that was met was the reduction of the suicide rate by 10%, but even then, only 35 countries said they had prevention strategies

The consequences of not seeking mental health are quite obvious; fighting something you don't even know exists deteriorates the quality of life, and prevents you from working, studying and spending time with your loved ones; and, in multiple times it ends with people taking their lives. 

Our app is meant to help everyone that needs it, and our target population is people who often don't have the time or money to seek mental health attention. These are people from ages 15 and up, for we know that mental health is for everyone, regardless of sex or age.

They are currently underserved since accessibility to mental health is limited. For some, being able to go to therapy is not possible, due to economic issues, lack of time or the fear of how society will react to them seeking help. 

With Always mind we will reduce the time it takes to go to a therapist's office, as well as a lower the price both for the patient (who will not spend money on transportation) and the expert (who will not invest in high fixed costs). With the community option, we want to normalize the conversation on mental health, making it easier for people to seek help when they need it.

Another important aspect is that we will have agreements with educational institutions and workplaces, so we can give them discounts, free sessions and customized plans when their partners (students/workers) need it.

As we are still in a concept stage of our project, the steps we have taken so far are only research with potential users. We have made school projetcs, like a thesis in high school (regarding mental health and its accesibility in our country) made by one of our team members. 

We have done our own research on how mental health (and the lack of the accesibility) impacts the lives of people. We also conducted a brief online survey to potential users, to know how much they knew about mental health and their opinions and experiences on this issue.

Additionally, we have seen up close how mental health issues impact those surrounding us, as well as having personally experienced mental health problems ourselves.

In conclusion, the environment where we grew up in (especially with us growing up in a quite technological era) has made it an evident issue amongst society that we can not ignore.

As we stated above, we are currently working in the concept. We have an idea of how the app will work, we conducted a survey to know to whom would it be useful, and most importantly, we're eager to help people access quality mental health care. 

That is why, as we have basic knowledge on how the whole concept will work, we are looking forward to getting the help we need to take that step from the idea to a real service. 

Although we are not experts in the thecnologies that we will mention, we have made research on them and we know that they would be useful to fulfill our main objective.  

With that being said, our core technology will be a Mobile Application. We will use AI for the correct function of the chatbot. For this option, we want to also apply affective computing to provide a more precise service to customers who want to know, overall, how their mental health state is.

To provide the historical record of apatient we will need cloud computing to store all the information. 

Finally, as we will store sensitive information regarding the patients' medical record, we will aply cybersecurity measurments such as SSL certificate and firewalls, but we are aware that we will need mentorship on this subjtect to have a better cybersecurity system.

We are still in a concept stage of our solution, however, we estimate that the part of the population we will directly impact within our first year of operation, will be mexicans ages 15 to 39; this represents 39.5% of Mexico's population. We also hope to reach the LGBTTTIQ+ population, which represents 11% of mexicans. 

We aim to reach as many people as possible, as we know that more than 70% of mexicans do have access to internet connection. 

Once we launch Always Mind, our main goal is to eliminate the barriers between mental health specialists and people who need their help. We want to lessen the factors that prevent people from getting mental health assistance, such as lack of money or time. To remove this barriers, we have the app itself: a virtual component that brings both parties closer. We also plan to invest in marketing campaigns and find strategic partenerships to reach as many people as possible.

Another thing we want to accomplish is taking out the stigma from mental health treatments; we want everyone to know that it's okay not to be okay, and furthermore, that there are safe spaces for them to express their feelings. This will be done by enabling the community option, with strict guidelines to create a safe environment.

In conclusion, our solution is centered in people's wellbeing; our ultimate goal is to help them live their lives at their fullest.

The main way we will keep track on how many people are we reaching is by counting how many people are downloading the app. 

As in to how many people are actively using the mental health specialists services, we will have the data of how many people are suscribed to get this service.

We will also keep track of who and how many strategic partnerships we have, to know how many of the minorities we are targeting are being helped. 

In terms of qualitative statistics, we will use the opinions of users, and we plan to make a satisfaction surveys to know wether the service is being as effective as we want to or not. The app's statistics will also be useful when it comes to know a more quantitative side of people's satisfaction.

Our main barriers are financial, technical and legal.

Financial: as we are in a concept stage, the main barrier is financial. We do not have the economic resources to start building an app, and we also need funding to start paying the specialists for their services. 

Technical: since we do not have a complete knowledge on how the already mentioned technlogies work, we will need mentorship on those subjects. 

Legal: mental health care requires specialists to ask for sensitive information to their patients, and in some cases it also includes the suministration of medicines. This is legally regulated, and we will need assistance to make things right so the app can work properly.

We are International Business students, so we have a certain knowledge on how to work a business model for the app. Our team leader recently took an entrepreneurial training diploma, and she is planning to keep working on the matter. She is also starting a course on digital positioning for enterprises. 

As of the rest of the team, they have taken some courses on cloud computing and programming that help us understand basic concepts.

About experiences, we have plenty of them: our team leader has had classmates that suffered from mental health issues. She met a boy in secondary school who was her friend. He seemingly had a anxiety disorder and depression, as he would get extremely nervous when he had to speak up; in fact, he was unable to do so. He also had suicidal thoughts and overall, our team leader perceived a poor mental health state on him, which prevented him from making friends, enjoying his life and also had an impact on his grades. And it would take us an entire day to tell each and every situation where we knew something was not right with someone's mental health.

On the other hand, we have also witnessed how people react to someone showing signs of a mental disorder. We have seen how people make fun and discriminate the ones that have (or may have) a mental condition, since they don't understand that what happens to these people isn't something they can control: the huge stigma around mental health. 

Personally, we have had our own battles; wether they were small or not, we are conscious that are some point we were not okay, and we did not have the access to a health care system to help us. 

We are currently not working with any organizations, but we plan to do so with schools, work centers and non-profits.

We will ensure an intersectional feminist perspective on the services that will be provided by the app. We understand that, historically, psychology and its related fields has been plagued by mysoginistic and sexist points of view; so we want to be sure that the therapists that we will be hiring align with our values as an enterprise. For this, we will have them fill an application form to know their perspectives on pyschology and its relation with intersectional feminism. This application form will not be made by us only, but we will seek expert's help to build them. 

And as we also understand that women are typically underpaid and less likely to be hired in comparison to their male peers, we will give them a higher chance to be a therapist on our app (as long as they meet the terms that we set on the application form). 

The Prize will be mainly used to finance the team of experts that will help us meet the standards to provide an intersectional feminist perspective on the app. We also want to use part of the money to provide free services to non-profits that help women recover from trauma (domestic violence victims, families of victims of femicide, etc).