First Step Mental Health App

The goal of this project is to create a tool that provides students at Minnesota State University, Mankato with mental health information through a freely available smartphone application (App). Our approach uses a software engineering design process that focuses on who our customers are, what resources are available, and how we can best connect the two to improve student lives. We identified the stakeholders involved and worked with campus mental health professionals to help shape our App. While there is a broad range of mental health topics, we have focused on materials related to depression. The first process gives the student a picture of their standing through a frequently used and freely available evaluation questionnaire. Depending on the results, the App provides supportive feedback in the form of materials that describe coping skills, ways to contact campus counselors, and other local community resources. We have incorporated artificial intelligence approaches to provide the most appropriate materials given the student evaluation. In addition, we have incorporated formal graphic design to make the App easy to use. The outcome is an App that is free for campus students, connects them to resources and can be improved upon by future developers