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Overview

PrideMind is a mobile application focused on mental health, specifically for queer people. The goal is to offer a support system for queer individuals with social intervention and mood detection methods.

The founder uncovered a need for suicide prevention within the queer community. Recognizing that social media is taking over, the goal was to utilize social media metrics and verbiage to detect and predict the user’s mental health state using machine learning. We found that referencing the user’s current social networks and usage data was the best place to start.

Discovery

Did you know that every 45 seconds, at least one queer youth attempts suicide? Almost always, queer people lack the critical support and education that is required for having a healthy relationship with sexuality. Friends and families are not aware of how to deal with an individual questioning or assuring their identity. And what about the individuals who do not have that support? Unfortunately, the individuals with no support system are 40% more likely to attempt suicide.

We deeply resonated with these startling statistics and knew that we needed some sort of prevention method. Mental health techniques are almost always focused on coping methods or recovery, not prevention. We want to create a tool used for intercepting suicide ideologies rather than promoting them.

We knew that the company would thrive off of a freemium pricing model. Our thinking began with the idea of needing an offering for all people, no matter the financial state. With a free and premium option, any user could get support at the depth and breadth that they choose.

The primary market is individuals aged 20-30, live in the United States, identify as queer, place importance on their mental health, and progressive. Secondary and tertiary markets include in teenagers and conservative identification, respectively. Our total addressable market is 710 million. Our serviceable obtainable market is 1.5 million, which is determined by location, narrowed down to three major U.S. cities – New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

The Trevor Project would be indirectly associated with many resources regarding queer mental health. They also have a crisis line for people experiencing mental health troubles. Shmoody and STIGMA would be directly associated with mood prediction software and alternative methods of support. Both platforms are community-based but do not directly address user’s needs.

Although personas frequently generalize the needs of users, we created three personas based on our identified markets. We surveyed potential users to understand their experience and feelings around mental health. After gaining insight from real people, we characterized each persona, including age, education level, job industry, income, personality archetype, personal background, motivations, influences, information channels, goals, pain points, and solution needs.

It was important for us to speak with experts in the field psychology and entrepreneurship because we wanted to back our findings with real world principles. We spoke with a mental health therapist and psychologist. They shared insight into how a mental state is categorized and measured. We also spoke with a founder with experience in education and government. They spoke about the intricacies of working with sensitive subject matter.

Delivery

We needed to summarize the experience of those that deal with mental health, so, based on our research, we created a flowchart of touchpoints along the journey of mental health and suicide. Our goal was to find a single area of focus that our product could intervene and sustain, which was self-regulation.

The black text is the touchpoint. The red text is the opportunity area.

We got carried away and created a mid-fidelity, draft prototype of the mobile application. Users needed a tool that could work in the background and be extremely accessible, which is why a mobile application was chosen as the solution. We found that three categories were pertinent: support or help, education, and analytics.

As for the MVP, we figured that users would input their mental health state, which could be compared to past data and current analytics to predict and detect states. Machine learning would be utilized to conduct the prediction and detection. Users could then read or listen to resources pertaining to their queer identity and mental health state.

We conducted multiple feature surveys and user interviews to understand how the product may fit in the market and how users feel about the product. We uncovered insights, like 1) in times of need, communication should feel comforting and personal, 2) text should be limited and visual elements should not feel medical or institutional, and 3) responsibility for action should not be placed on the user.

We felt confident that our initial assumption of product was the correct course of action. We created a high-fidelity, interactive prototype in Figma. We looked into development platforms and possible firms for outsourcing.

Results

We established the company as an entity and received a bit of funding from an accelerator program. Unfortunately, we were not able to continue pursuing the company and product. It was important for us to find people who were just as passionate about the subject matter to get involved. We could not establish confident, supportive relationships with like-minded investors and developers.

Although, every potential user and expert that we spoke with was excited about the product. Most shared that this product was absolutely essential for the queer community or even society at-large. While this venture has taken a pause, I guarantee that we will continue the work at some point.

Overview

After founding PrideMind as an established company and not gaining much traction, we decided to go back to the drawing board. We realized that the world did not need yet another mobile application, so we looked at the problem from a new lens – no technology. We found that policy intervention was necessary.

Discovery

We went back to the drawing board to understand the more basic ideologies of suicide in the queer community. We thought it was important to look view the problem on a systems level.

Originally, we had intended to focus on queer youth. We returned to this idea and started to uncover the effects of technology on queer youth.

...decrease the number of suicidal ideologies amongst youth in the queer community without the use of technology?

We wanted to thoroughly detail the reason behind suicide in the queer community, especially youth. We conducted an altered version of the Five Whys exercise. We were able to further delve into the problem space and transition into ideating.

Delivery

We continued ideating based on all previous exercises. While the overall solution was unclear, we finally had narrowed the most effective solutions. We felt that a set of books and worksheets, criminalizing discrimination, or an equity consulting and legal firm would be best suited.

After plenty of reflection, we were reminded of what originally interested us in the problem space: a lack of support. We felt that the only possible solution that created sustainable and long-lasting support was legislation.

We crafted an outline of a law, similar to The Americans with Disabilities Act, called The Queer Youth with Mental Disorders Act (QYMDA). Support that is given to queer youth under QYMDA is access to mental health services, anti-discrimination protections, family and peer support, data collection and research, and crisis prevention and intervention.