HelpUrSelf

Take control of your mental health with simple tests, connect through chat and forums, track your journey with mood analysis and stay safe with our intelligent spam detection. Mental wellbeing matters

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Inspiration

We are the BUET_DEVils. All four of us are from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. As university students, we firsthand experienced what toll it takes on our mental health balancing academics, extracurricular activities, social life and the list goes on. Mental health struggles can feel alienating, and finding the right support isn't always easy. Our goal was to create a safe, inclusive space where individuals can connect, access necessary resources, help and support each other to uplift their mental state.

What it does

Our website simplifies the process of becoming aware about mental issues and getting the necessary help need by implementing several useful features

User profile : We implemented a simple register and login interface to simply the process of starting this
enlightening journey. We also have the option of customizing and editing personal information.

Connecting with people : Users can connect to other users using their usernames. They can also find users with similar issues to connect with. We have also kept the opportunity to connect users with therapist specializing in different types of mental issues. From chat interface, users can also check out the profile of other users.

Informal Tests : We are no psychiatrists by any means. But we have researched the most prevalent mental issues and gather data to meticulously prepare questions that can roughly determine the mental issue of an user. These tests can help a user to become more aware of the mental issues he/she might be suffering from.

Mood Tracking :
Writing journal is one of the oldest and most effective way of clearing up our mind. We implemented a feature rich text editor for users to write their journals whenever they want. There is also a mood tracker and we show the mood changes visually through a chart. We also provided AI-assisted insights according to the changes in the moods

Blogs : People can post their issue and get help from others who suffered from those issues previously. Moreover, an user can go through these blog posts and learn about several experiences of other users to become more aware of several mental issues.

How we built it

We used React bundled with vite to build the frontend of our project. In the backend we used Node.js and express.js library to create and manage servers. We performed CRUD operations using sqlite3 database to avoid the complications of hosting and maintaining a cloud database.

Challenges we ran into

We didn't have a clue about several libraries / technologies that proved to be essential to this project. We also learnt to collaborate efficiently and reviewing each others' codes through this hackathon. We had the fundamental parts divided among us, so every one of us had faced challenges on a personal level. Let's hear from the team members about the challenges in detail :

Tamzeed Mahfuz : I was mainly occupied in the task of connecting users and therapists. I had to learn how to use socket.io, implement real-time messaging, show unread texts and how to handle other complications related to chatting systems from the scratch. I also got to be proficient in handling those messages in the database.

Nafis Nahian : I had the responsibility to implement AI-assisted mood analysis and intelligent spam detection model for this project. I learnt how to use google charts how to clean and manage data to generate those charts. I also figured out how to use LLMs as an API in web development. To implement the spam detection model, I had to become familiar with TensorflowJS library and how to use their pre-trained models.

Mehmud Azad : I was tasked with preparing the tests and presenting them to the users. To implement this, I had to research about mental issues and how to tackle them efficiently. After gathering vast information about this topic, I used React Carousel to present the test question to the users as aesthetically pleasing as possible. I also lead the designing aspect of the website to make it more user friendly.

Khalid Hasan Tuhin : I took the responsibility for implementing blog system in this website. During this, I faced the challenge of implementing nested comments to each blogs. I put my theoretical knowledge of Data Structures and Algorithm at work. I used the Depth First Search(DFS) algorithm to implement the nested comment feature. This project helped me realize the practical use of DSA in real world scenarios

Accomplishments that we're proud of

When we started this journey, we had no idea what we were going to make. At took us two all night long meetings to get the blueprint of this project in our minds. We had to learn many new features, we had to change our thinking process and finally we have made something that can help to make our world a better place.

What we learned

By making a real world projects, we put our theoretical knowledge at use. We realized how professional developers constantly face deadline pressures still provide fruitful results. We learned how to be a programmer rather than being a coder. Planning and collaborating with fellow programmers can take us to whole another level. This hackathon mainly contributed to our rapid growth in the world of technologies.

What's next for HelpUrSelf

As we were working on our projects, all of us had some ideas how to scale this project and make this more helpful to the users. In the future if we get the opportunity, we want the professionally certified therapists to join us in this endeavor. We roughly implemented the feature of creating a quiz which can achieve completion with the help of those professionals. We also plan to integrate more AI functionalities to help our users. Overall, we want to say that this project only marks the beginning of our purpose to spread the awareness about mental health and the only way to go from here is up.

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