What We built
The app is called “Help Me” and is designed primarily as an “SOS” (distress signal) to a selected circle of trusted people when someone is going through a mental health crisis. The goal is for the user to build a trusted community around themselves with private conversations and provide a system to show the user's range of emotions.
Category Submission:
Program for the People: Mental Health
App Link
Screenshots
Home Page
Log-in Page
Status Page
Connections Page
Update Status Page
Search for Connections Page
Dark Mode
Description
Communication Features
- Users can click on another user's profile to make a SOS phone call.
- Users can click on another user's profile to send a SOS text message, "I need help".
- Users can send in-app messages to each other.
Status Updates Features
- Users can create a status update about their emotional feelings.
- Users can see their connections' status updates.
Creating a connection Features
- Users can search and add other users as a connection.
User Creation Features
- User can create a user profile with name, username, email, and phone number.
- User can add up to five friends as their top five connections.
User Preference
- User can choose light or dark mode.
In the future we would like to add these features to provide more resources to people facing these health challenges!
- Users can push one button to send to everyone, "I am having a mental health crisis. Please come help me!"
- When the user makes an SOS text message, their location is sent with the message.
- Display a list of mental health resources.
Link to Source Code
Permissive License
Background
Throughout my life I have only seen mental health issues on the TV. I considered these issues as other peoples problems until I saw them manifest within my family and friends. Now I'm scared of the thought that someone I love, cherish, and respect could experience something so dramatic and terrifying alone. Even worse, they could be hurt or killed while reaching out for help.
A sad byproduct of using social media as a “call for help” when going through a mental health crisis is that the person's reputation could be shredded by people who aren't dedicated to that person’s safety. I have found that this adds to the drama and fuels the fire of paranoia.
How we built it
The app was originally created in a single repo with both client and server files. We found we were unable to run both components of the application within a single Digital Ocean app. We had to create two sites to host the server and client.
We learned
- How to deploy web applications to the Digital Ocean App Platform.
- New experience using Angular to build a web applications.
- Introduction into user interface styling with Tailwind.
- Building the back end server with NodeJS and MongoDB.
Additional Resources/Info
The original design idea looked like this and focused on communication.
My project partner recreated the wire-frame around the idea of a private community and communication.
Top comments (4)
Awesome Article JC!
Thank you
JC This may be your best one yet. Definitely portfolio material!
Thank you