The inspiration behind creating this mental health app, Serene stems from the growing need for accessible and convenient mental health support. With the increasing stress levels and mental health issues in today's fast-paced world, it has become imperative to provide individuals with a platform to address their mental health concerns. The goal is to empower people with the tools and resources needed to prioritize and improve their mental well-being, breaking the stigma around seeking mental health help. Mental health apps aim to bridge the gap between individuals and mental health professionals, offering a supportive and confidential environment for individuals to take control of their mental health.
The application is geared toward giving the user a personalized mental health routine and an AI chatbot that can provide real-time solutions to mental health concerns. Through extensive research, we found simple mental health exercises that have been medically proven to subside panic attacks and anxiety. These activities can be incorporated into the user's mental health routine based on a personality and mental health quiz the user takes during the setup of their account. The AI chatbot is intended to learn based on the user's mental health patterns and provide solutions geared toward the user's specific needs.
We developed this application using tools such as pycharm, bash, GitHub, and frameworks like react.js. Python is the primary language in use for AI development. Our intent for the next iteration of this application is to have an AI chatbot that can comprehend complex questions and provide real-time solutions while simultaneously developing its neural network. In the current iteration, the application uses keyword detection to provide responses to the user's inputs. A prototype of this feature was created by us using python GUI libraries(tkinter, re, nltk, pytorch, and firebase) to demonstrate its functionality.
Our primary challenge was developing an AI chatbot that can learn the user's habits. We understood that such a system would require a large quarry of data for it to comprehend questions and generate relevant responses. As a workaround, we developed an AI simulator that uses keyword detection to understand the user input and respond with the most pertinent predetermined response. Our next biggest challenge was creating an appealing user interface. We researched color schemes and color psychology and selected soothing color patterns. Our UI has a very minimalistic design and modern touch to encourage user interaction and leave a lasting impression.
As a team, our most praised accomplishment was making the chatbot functional. This chatbot can generate relevant responses and can guide users to provide specific mental health routines to subside their mental health concerns. We developed a keyword detection software that iterates through our large quarry of predetermined responses and picks the most relevant one. This was achieved by our software's ability to gauge the level of similarity between our quarry responses and the user input, thus returning the most relevant response.
Throughout this experience, we gained exposure to new tools such as firebase, react.js, and python AI libraries such as nltk. Every challenge whether it be big or small forced us to dig deeper into our resources and learn useful skills. Apart from the technical experience, the workshops and social interactions gave us a chance to interact with industry professionals and understand how this line of work makes such a profound impact on our world.
Serene has a strong base set to build upon. In future interactions off our application, we plan on expanding our AI bot, enabling Siri compatibility, and expand on our database for mental health care routines. We plan on connecting with psychologists and therapists to develop a more profound user interface. We also plan on using these connections to bring our app into the healthcare industry, where we hope to see doctors use this as part of psychological care.