MentalBlock

Inspiration

My inspiration for this project on a personal level is that I have had struggles with mental health, like so many other people in the past few years. With mental health becoming a more prevalent topic over the past few years, talks about the quality and trustworthiness of different resources have come into question. When searching for a mental health resource for help, no one wants to have to consider who is and isn't a trustworthy source. While my website isn't a solution to this problem, it helps demystify which resources can benefit those needing them.

What it does

My site uses a search function to narrow down what type of resources this is looking for, whether it's a type, like a live chat, or something specific they are looking for help with, like depression. Beyond that, it also uses a network of what the community has deemed to be trustworthy and helpful resources via a rating system to help serve the more helpful resources to those who need them while providing warnings and recommending those who are unhelpful, rude, dangerous, or untrustworthy.

How we built it

I started with a basic plan for an HTML webpage. Then, the main part of this project was learning how to integrate a search system that could be interacted with by the community. I used the open-source search engine Typesense, because it had a very simple-to-learn system.

Challenges we ran into

Creating a concept for this type of project for mental health where people can actually feel safe looking for and using these resources. Another challenge was building something that I had absolutely zero clue of how it worked when I started. This project started as an idea, and I needed to learn how to fulfill that idea in as short of time as possible, and while it still isn't nearly at the level that I want it to be, I feel like I made good progress.

What we learned

I learned how to incorporate a search engine system in HTML. When I was choosing this one of the things that I wanted to do is make sure that I was using something secure and open-source, while also making sure that this would be a scalable and functional system for what I have planned. That led me to my choice in Typesense, which meant that I had to learn the functions of the software before starting to attempt to integrate it.

What's next for MentalBlock

I'm honestly not too sure. Before I would do anything with it I would want to get it into a more consistently functioning integration with Typesense, as the current integration is quite messy. I would hope that this could be turned into a public resource maintained by a community looking to help people find what resources they need, and making sure that what we can provide people is true, reliable, and helpful.

Built With

• css
• html
• javascript
• typesense