Mind Peace application is a great resource for individuals who are dealing with mental health issues and seeking support without fearing judgment from others.
Project Overview
If you never had issues with your mental health, you probably think that it must be easy to control your thoughts or seek professional help, but that is not always true. According to Canadian Mental Health Association, almost one-half (49%) of those who feel they have suffered from depression or anxiety have never sought professional help about this problem.
Problems
According to WHO, “mental health conditions can have a substantial effect on all areas of life, such as school or work performance, relationships with family and friends and ability to participate in the community. Two of the most common mental health conditions, depression and anxiety, cost the global economy US$ 1 trillion each year.” With Mind Peace application we are trying to offer professional help to people who are suffering silently because they want to avoid being judged by the society. There are already some applications related to mental health in the market, but most of them are not effective, and the ones with better structures are mostly very expensive. By creating Mind Peace application we are offering free consultations with professionals and many other features like chatroom, meditation workshops, etc.
Problem in Canada
To take a closer look at this problem here in Canada, we would like to bring your attention to the following from CAMH. The following two paragraphs are provided directly from Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) website to backup previous insights: “Mental illness is a leading cause of disability in Canada, preventing nearly 500,000 employed Canadians from attending work each week. To make matters worse, the cost of disability leave as a result of mental illness is about double the cost of leave due to physical illness.” “While mental illness accounts for about 10 percent of the burden of disease in Ontario, it receives just seven percent of healthcare dollars. This shortfall, totaling almost $1.5 billion, creates an ever widening gap in the system’s ability to deliver timely intervention and adequate long-term care.”
Problem Statement
Mental Health issues have been increasing gradually over the past decades, but less and less people seek help for their mental health related problems. This might be due to the high rates for psychotherapy sessions or the fear of being judged by others.
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Research
1. Survey
The survey includes 8 questions with short answers. The demographic is people older than 18 years old, currently living in Canada. I collected 30 responses. It was important that the responses were anonymous so participants were encouraged to answer to the questions truthfully. The screenshots of the survey questions are presented in the bottom.
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Research
2. Supporting Information
It’s estimated that 970 million people worldwide had a mental or substance use disorder in 2017. The largest number of people had anxiety disorder, estimated at around 4 percent of the population.
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Brainstorming
01
35% of participants think professional mental health support services are expensive, so it is important to present a free alternative.
02
Being judged by others is another reason that people do not want to get help, it is mandatory to provide safe and confidential services to the users.
03
32% of participants said that they do not have easy access to mental health support. We tried to solve this problem by creating an application which can be used any time anywhere with easy to follow interface.
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Solution
Mind Peace would offer free, safe and easy mental health support to whoever is in need of these services. Mind Peace is easy to access and confidential and tries to give users the best services in the fastest way possible.
Why Mind Peace?
The first and the most important fact about mental health support in Canada, is that most of them are not free. Wait times for counselling and therapy can be long, especially for children and youth. In Ontario, wait times of six months to one year are common (Based on CAMH). In terms of current applications, there is no totally free mental health support apps on the market right now. Most of them just offer some basic activities like breathing techniques, meditations and exercises. Based on The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), one in two Canadians have—or have had—a mental illness by the time they reach 40 years of age. Alarming statistics like this only underscore the need for all of us to get involved in one way or another.
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Workflows
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Wireframes
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Summary
The research and the design tasks were all done by me in this project. The focus was mostly on research in Mind Peace case study, and gathering information and doing surveys helped me to empathize more efficient with the target users.
