Advice and help for young people with mental health issues
This app is for young people with mental health issues who are not accessing formal mental health services. It's designed to be a welcoming way for children and young people to learn more about mental health and the services available.
Children and young adults may not have good access to information and services for mental health, particularly if they are not already receiving treatment.
We made a Tamagotchi-style cat that would be appealing and comforting to children. The cat engages the user in conversation about their mood rather than confronting them with lots of information.
For this prototype there are only three ways to interact with the cat, but our intention is that the user would need to care for the cat (as with a Tamagotchi) and the cat would help the user to take care of themselves.
The app is currently an early prototype designed to demonstrate the concept. Our roadmap for development into a minimum viable product (MVP) is as follows:
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Full mobile support
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Improve animations and design
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Increase the number of interactions you can have with the cat
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Store state so that the cat remembers previous visits, allowing the user to build up a relationship with it
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More nuanced conversation paths (including content written by mental healthcare professionals)
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More personalisation (e.g. cat and room colours)
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Front-end: React, Redux, animate.css
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Back-end: null
- Postgres DB with Hapi.js server to store previous interactions