My Mind.
My Support.
My Growth.
An app that helps you seek personalised support to manage your anxiety
Reinventing Anxiety Support.
My Mind is a mental health app that fosters an inclusive and accessible space targeted to recent high school leavers transitioning into tertiary studies in NSW. It provides information about and tools to manage anxiety, as well as a pathway for future support. My Mind achieves this through personalised services, such as recommending educational videos, managing techniques, prompt questions and check-in points. Professional psychologists produce these videos to help students understand and work through their anxiety.
​
My Mind also enables users to connect with professional psychologists based on user location. Users can book appointments via video call or in-person sessions. Overall, My Mind provides an accessible platform for young adults suffering from an anxiety disorder to seek professional help, reduce stigma and combat misinformation.
App Features
/01
Personalised
Experience
Customise the app to your own needs and adopt it into your daily life through:
-
Prompt questions
-
Recommended videos based on your needs
-
Daily thoughts page
-
To-do lists
-
Personalised calendar
/02
Educational Resources
Access short and engaging educational videos created by professional psychologists to learn about anxiety and different management techniques.
​
We are combatting misinformation by adopting a social media-like short-form video style by professionals for young users.
​
/03
Seeking Professional Help
Contact psychologists near your area by booking appointments at your own comfort via:​
-
Video call
-
In-person
/04
Safety Features
My Mind has taken extra precautions to ensure your safety through:
-
Anonymity
-
Emergency Contacts
-
Helplines
-
Trigger Warnings
-
Secure data
Our
Mission
Why We Created This App?
Our research has shown that anxiety has become one of the most common mental health disorders experienced by Australians, according to Beyond Blue (2022). 'One in three women and one in five men will experience anxiety' (Beyond Blue, 2022). More specifically, young adults between 18-24 years are the most prominent age group to experience anxiety in NSW (AIHW, 2021). Unfortunately, anxiety levels have been exacerbated due to the impacts of COVID-19. A primary insight was that students would prefer if universities better prioritised mental health services to increase help-seeking and accessibility (Orygen, 2017). University students also requested educational services surrounding anxiety to learn different skills and manage their anxieties (Orygen, 2017).
​
The mental health app industry does not address the problem space adequately. Existing apps provide band-aid solutions, such as mindfulness or organisation tools, that are not personalised to each user's individual needs. There also appears to be a lack of professional support on such platforms, which increases misinformation and encourages other help-seeking pathways via untrustworthy sources such as social media (Goodyear, Armour & Wood 2019). This insight sparked the idea of implementing an integrated referral system where users can easily book a virtual or video call appointment with psychologists in their area.
​
Overall, we wanted My Mind to be a convenient app that saves university students and young adults time doing their own research, and be the central platform that provides all the resources needed around anxiety.
Design Justice & Ethical Principles
The My Mind app is designed with design justice as informed by the Design Justice for Action principles (Allied Media Projects, n.d). All videos on the app include closed captions and the ability for users to speed up or slow down the videos. The app is also free across both the app store and google play store to ensure that it is more accessible for students. Ethical principles were embedded through the app's design, including anonymity, to ensure users feel safe and comfortable. We also value the privacy of our users with their personal information not recorded or collected for third-party use. During the app's iteration and research stage, the team interviewed real psychologists to ensure the app design features were professional, factual and suitable. We also worked directly with key users to ensure the design and specific features met their personal needs (Abascal et al., 2005). Iterative testing and feedback ensured that the app had our key users at the forefront. We followed a 'design with' rather than a 'design for' process to generate empathy and ensure we provided a solution that targeted the root cause of our problem scope.
About Us
The founders of My Mind are four UTS Communication students, Imogen Vander, Minjie Berry, Carissa James and Georgia Downey. They are currently undertaking the subject Making Digital Impact and have collaborated to create an innovative app designed for university students struggling with anxiety. This is an issue we all feel strongly about, as we have experienced the impact that anxiety can have on one's life, either personally or through close friends. The fact that it has become a common mental health condition in Australia further highlights the importance of this issue.
​
Each team members have equally contributed to the creation of My Mind through their different roles. Imogen Vander is the lead app developer, Minjie Berry is the lead website creator, Carissa James and Georgia Downey are the video creators.
