HELPIFY
The Team
Teamname: HELPIFY
Members: Flora Machava, Franziska Bröckelmann
What is your idea about?
HELPIFY is a self-directed digital program that teaches adolescents and young adults of 13-22 years with depressive symptoms, skills such as mood assessment, behavioral activation, problem solving, and mindfulness. The content is based on therapeutic interventions of cognitive behavioral therapy and behavioral activation.
We want HELPIFY to address the need for psychosocial support for young people in emotional crisis in a low-threshold and scalable way. Additionally, we would like to offer the possibilities to sensitize the social environment of these young people and to educate them about mental illness.
Based on therapeutic interventions of cognitive behavioral therapy and behavioral activation
Young people use HELPIFY to learn about the connection between mood and behavior and find activities that can help them feel better. The app then helps them plan and debrief these positive activities.
Users can get a sense of progress and their accomplishment as they complete interactive exercises taught by a robotic guide and win rewards in the app.
A chat function allows them to interact with each other anonymously in a protected setting.
Young people can send information kits (education about the condition and how to deal with it) to parents, relatives, friends and/or schools via HELPIFY.
If language is detected in the app indicating possible self-harm, crisis resources and emergency help are displayed to patients.
How did you get together as a team?
We have known each other since childhood and have shared many paths and overcome hurdles together.
Over the years we have gotten to know each other's strengths, weaknesses and interests better and better and realized that we complement each other's skills very well.
Out of the need to offer young people easily accessible and effective help and to relieve and strengthen the help system, we have grown together as a team.
How did you come up with your idea?
We are witnessing a global problem: countless young people are struggling with their mental health. Even before and especially during the pandemic.
People who work with children and young people, like us, are unable to do justice to everyone due to the number of people seeking help. We have to watch many young people suffer and the help system is reaching its limits.
Our idea was born out of the need for scalable and quickly available applications to help young people, their families and the social system.
What are you studying/working or what have you studied?
Franziska is a child- and adolescent psychiatrist
Flora is a special educator for emotional and social development
What has Gateway ESC helped you with?
Gateway helped us to bundle our multi-layered thoughts and ideas, to guide them in the right direction and to form them into a concrete idea.
The consultations, participation in helpful workshops and other interesting events, have made it much easier for us to find and develop ideas.
Gateway gave us courage and enabled us to realize our vision in a thoughtful way.