Affinity

The Project

The name for this app is Affinity. The main purpose is to create a platform for patients with various mental health issues to find people that had similar experiences with them to talk to. The user will first create a profile in which they enter their information. Then they will select from the list of mental illnesses that they suffer from. The user will also provide a broad description of their illness to the best of their ability. The app will match different users through the options they selected. Once users are matched they can begin to chat privately about what they are currently suffering from, and hopefully, they will no longer feel that they are alone.

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Team Comments

The idea for this project came to me during the beginning of the pandemic. Last year alone, the number of people that reported having symptoms of depression increased threefold, and this trend is still continuing to this day. Hopefully, with this project, I'm able to help those in need.

During the creation of the project, I found it difficult to integrate the user matching system at the beginning as it was quite complicated to debug it. However, with many trials and errors, I was able to eventually solve the problem completely.

Currently, I'm also developing an Al through IBM Watson that will identify the descriptions of the users to better match them together. The AI will also be able to talk to the patient as well. I would also like to add a community post section where users can post inspirational and encouraging words.