One in five Australians between the ages of 16-85 experience a mental illness or mental health related issue in any year (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008). My project proposal is an app that monitors behavioural changes that are related to or caused by mental illnesses. The device would work without any user input as many smartphones now come with built in sensors. Along with monitoring behavioural changes, the device could also ask questions daily to see how you are doing. The device would be available to everyone as you never know who could get a mental illness.
The motivation around this project comes from the amount of people that suffer from mental illness in Australia alone. In Australia one in five Australians experience a mental illnesses or mental health related issue at any time during a year. This number is an alarming amount considering Australia has around 25 million people living in this country. To add to this, around 2,400 Australians die to suicide each year, and most of these are thought to be caused by mental illnesses (betterhealth,2018).
This app would work by monitoring your normal social interactions and behaviours by using sensors that are built into phones. The app would monitor these interactions passively without ever having to be activated, only having to be installed. After the app is installed you can connect it to your local health specialist, so they may be alerted to abnormal changes in your behaviour. The app will monitor things like how often you go out, how often you talk to friends via text message and phone calls and it will also monitor ‘trigger’ words that can be related to mental illnesses. The trigger words could be words or sentences not normally said by people such as, suddenly being fixated on talking about death or suicide in your messages or phone calls or saying things like “I’d rather be alone”. The app would recognise these words and send warnings to your health professional, so they can contact you and if possible be able to help you. The app will also recognise sudden changes in your social behaviour, such as you stop going out as often, you become socially isolated from your friends by ignoring both phone calls and text messages from them and it will also recognise changes in how you talk to friends, by picking up changes The app would be connected to your health specialists by having its own separate online network that links both patients and health professionals together. Along with these features the app itself will have a built-in procedure, that if the changes are detected it will ask a set of questions along the lines of if you are ok, have any significant changes occurred in your life, etc. The answers to these questions can be directly connected to your health specialist and they can analyse the answers to determine whether help and support is needed.
To set this up, a stable connection to the supporting network for app will be required. Along with this some sort of internet connection whether it be WIFI or mobile data. To also set this up any app making service will be required to ensure that the app is correctly set up and to also ensure it is correctly coded, so it works passively on your phone. Also, the most obvious technology required for this to work is a working phone that can support the use of this app.
Setting up an app is no easy task and it requires a certain skill set to be completed. The most important aspect of developing an application for a mobile phone is being able to build a high-quality user interface of UI for short. To ensure this occurs someone with experience building a UI will be required. Along with the ability to make an high-quality UI, clean coding will also be required. What this means is the developer will choose a code such as HTML or Java and then produce the app ensuring the code is clean and organised to ensure for a working app that is easy to use. For the app the thrive it is important that the developer has the skills to ensure that the coding for the app supports multiple platforms such as iOS or android. Finally, as this app will be targeted to help identify mental illnesses, a specialist in identifying the characteristics of a mental illness will be required, so they can tell the developer what will be required to identify these illnesses.
The successful outcome of this app would ensure the early identification of people with mental illnesses. The early identification means that specialists can get involved sooner as they will be linked together via the app. For some people all they need is too talk and when this app identifies the problem the help they needed can be given and it could prevent them from doing something they will regret later or from doing somethings that has a major impact on the people around you. Overall if this app is a success many problems relating to mental illness can be prevented by presenting the people with the issues the help they require.
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< https://www.seek.com.au/job/39161048?searchrequesttoken=53fed1cc-8227-46e0-8784-078cafa8eb57&type=standout>
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