Feeling Low? You're Not Alone.

An effort to battle suicide by developing a close-knit community infrastructure to promote individuals to comfortably express their distress anonymously.

While there has been a steady rise in adolescent depression rates from 2015 - 2020, the number of teenagers who have received medical care or reported feeling depressed has remained consistently low, indicating the existence of stigma surrounding depression. Instead of seeking treatment or sharing their internal feelings to others, teenagers tend to resort to harmful methods such as consuming alcohol and drugs, vaping, taking unverified stress relief pills, and ultimately, committing suicide. I can confirm these findings through my own second hand experiences from my community. Just a year ago, during the COVID-19 lockdown, a young and ambitious 17 year old boy from a neighboring school was found dead in his room after having consumed a poisonous counterfeit stress relief pill which he had received from a stranger who he had met on Snapchat. The incident brought great grief to the boy's parents who, despite living under the same roof, had no idea that their son was experiencing such levels of stress. This tragic episode was followed by yet another shocking incident this year in which my very own classmate, who sat right next to me, unexpectedly committed suicide, shocking all of us and her family members who weren't aware of her mental state. All these happenings emphasize that identifying and diagnosing depression is a very hard task due to the nature of the illness. A person might externally seem to be leading a happy, jovial life but might be experiencing a storm inside of their minds. Therefore, a more efficient way to know if a person is suffering is to provide them with a conducive environment such that the sufferer can themselves open up about their feelings. 

In spite of the easy accessibility of mental health resources such as counselors, therapists, wellness centers, and psychiatrists, few students actually use these resources due to the fear of judgment. 

Recognizing this stigma, I have designed a mobile application in which teenagers feeling distressed can connect anonymously and share their feelings with someone of their preferred age and gender. The app would enable people to express their feelings at any time without any prior appointment, unlike counselors and therapists who require appointments to be booked ahead of time. The people whom the users would connect to come from a pool of genuine well wishers who I have gathered. I have initiated a social movement in order to get parents and middle and high school students from my community to support this infrastructure. A subset of people of all ages and genders are assigned for each time shift. The primary goal of this support system is to give everyone in the community a chance to open up their feelings without bringing into picture any names, judgments, or insecurities. 

I am working to help teenagers in my community who might be mentally distressed but are unable to share their feelings to others due to their fear of being judged. While there might already be multiple resources to treat these depressed individuals, few students actually use these resources. The solution I propose takes into account this inherent fear of judgment present in nearly all teenagers, and brings in the element of "anonymity" where one can have a wholesome conversation and get support from someone of their preference without having to reveal their identity. The app essentially gives individuals an outlet to spill their stress without feeling like they are being judged.

The main aim of this app is not to provide complete medical treatment in and of itself, but rather to supply a listening ear, a leaning pillow for sufferers at moments of distress when they might potentially be thinking of taking an extreme step. Usually these suicidal feelings occur at most for a temporary period of time and are quite fleeting, in the sense that these notions fluctuate, coming and going until the medication stabilizes. Therefore, managing these vulnerable weak moments is the key to preventing suicide. When a person who is feeling low and hopeless is able to communicate their feelings to an anonymous person who genuinely cares, the responder may be able to motivate them to wait before taking such an extreme step. Additionally, by knowing the location/ IP address of the device being used by the sufferer, the responder can alert caretakers, and further treatment options can be exercised in an emergency care.

My team comprises all the stakeholders to this issue which include parents and middle and high schoolers from my community. I believe that each member in my group is very crucial to the overall effort as each person comes to the table with their own unique set of experiences and perspectives. For instance, high schoolers and middle schoolers from my team are able to provide first hand experiences as they might be currently and actively experiencing these challenges in life. 

On the other end of the spectrum, my group also consists of a large number of parents who are very keen to understand the situation from differing lenses and correspondingly offer help. All these parents would have encountered similar challenges during their lives as teenagers which makes them equipped to handle emotional situations and counsel those who are suffering. 

The main idea behind this app is to provide a first level of support during extreme weak moments by holding the depressed individual back from taking a serious step and letting them know that this is simply a temporary urge which will pass. Subsequently, action would be taken to provide the sufferer with complete psychiatric care. 

I have had an active in-person discussion with community members, students, and parents who have at some point experienced these challenges. Through these meetings, I have realized that this cause is a very genuine and immediate need in light of the incidents that have happened in the recent past in my own community. The people who I have met with are all potential users of the app and have been included in all the community brainstorm meetings. 

Previous attempts at solving the issue of depression include creating both online and in-person resources such as prebooked therapy sessions and digital support apps that have been specifically labeled under the umbrella of mental health diseases, a section which teenagers hesitate to categorize themselves to fall under due to the stigma surrounding the issue. While many individuals might be experiencing extreme sadness, they might not want to accept or believe that they could be clinically depressed, which then becomes a barrier to actually using these resources. Moreover, it is at extreme points of depression and weakness that support is required, and prebooked therapy sessions will not aid in providing that immediate support during these extremely crucial, vulnerable points of time. Outside efforts to monitor and detect depression are also ineffective, considering that a person's external persona does not reflect their internal state of mind. 

Taking into consideration all these limitations, my solution provides a significantly improved approach to the problem in that it shifts the focus from detecting depression to encouraging individuals who are depressed to step up and share their feelings. The app has been intentionally named "Feeling Low? You're Not Alone" in order to bring in the core human element of connection as opposed to intimidating individuals by victimizing them as patients to an extremely deathly mental disease. Ultimately, by providing a space for safe, anonymous conversations, the solution addresses the two most important challenges in a teenager's life which include the fear of being judged due to the stigma surrounding depression and the feeling of loneliness where the victim feels like they have no outlet to spill their emotions during their most vulnerable and weak moments- points at which they might be considering suicide. 

I believe that this solution holds great scope in the future market as creators could potentially narrow their target to creating comfort spaces as opposed to focusing on diagnosing depression alone. The solution also could encourage future innovators to offer more personal and relatable app names instead of titles that are explicitly tied to suicide prevention and such sensitive topics which could potentially repel those who are feeling depressed and in the risk of committing suicide. 

One of the main impact goals I have set is to send out the message to all adolescents in my community that active support and care is available both at their schools and online. To achieve this impact, I plan to unite students from various schools in my district to create a large network of middle and high schoolers who can work together to initiate "Feeling Low? You're Not Alone" chapters at their respective schools. This group will also advertise the app by pasting posters and talking about the app in various classes. Through this advertisement and the initiation of clubs, those who need support would be well informed that there is a comfort cushion in their school which they can rely on when distressed. 

The next biggest impact I hope to have, is quite literally the objective of the app— to prevent further suicide cases from occurring. In order to effectuate this goal, I will have to organize training sessions with health professionals who would be certified to prepare the volunteers to appropriately respond to the sufferers in a gentle and listening manner. Ultimately, the goal is to get the sufferer to survive this vulnerable moment, and hence, the responder should be capable of providing that one-on-one support. 

This is a regular Android software application.

Although the initiative has not yet been deployed at this moment, it is expected to serve the residents of Folsom, California, specifically the middle and high schoolers in this district. The app is open to and could potentially impact over a thousand students, which encompasses the entire student population in Folsom. In the next year, I plan to further expand this network to include neighboring districts. 

The primary barrier that I am facing in accomplishing my impact goal lies in acquiring the required amount of backend support, in other words, the volunteers (parents and adolescents) in my community who would be willing to set apart time to talk to the distressed sufferers in the midst of their own busy schedules. 

Once the solution is deployed, more activities need to be designed around this noble motive, to keep the motivation going and evergreen. Such initiatives should not die.

I have not partnered up with any organization so far, but I plan to eventually reach out to some mental health organizations in and around my area in order to equip my team and myself with knowledge on how to communicate effectively with distressed individuals. Scheduling training sessions and meetings led by professional therapists would enable us to provide proper care to these potentially emotionally vulnerable individuals who we might be talking to. 

First of all, this is not a business model intended to generate money. It can better be described as a community effort to address the noble cause of preventing depression from escalating into suicide. My vision is that the app should be freely downloadable to all individuals. One of the main services that the app would provide is free one-on-one anonymous conversations with caring and genuine well wishers of the user's preferred age and gender who can support the user during times of distress. The app is essentially a comfort platform for one to vent out about their stress without having to reveal their identity. For those who might not possess online devices such as smartphones, there is also the option to be a part of the "Feeling Low? You're Not Alone" club meetings held at schools and community centers where teenagers can simply bond over fun activities and share out stressful events and how they overcame them. 

As mentioned earlier, this is a community driven model. Therefore, all funds are generated through community donations for this selfless project. The more the community provides, the more it reaps the benefits.