Created by Aidan Gerber, Shreyas Minocha, Anthony Insalaco, and Thomas Kaldahl.
Solving urgent mental health crises: securely, intelligently, and anonymously.
Built in less than 36 hours, Remedy addresses barriers to accessing mental health resources at Rice. Our site enables people facing any type of mental health issue to interact with a chatbot that either directs them to either:
- RUPD/REMS/988 in the case of a life-threatening, serious crisis;
- an appointment with the on-campus organization best tailored to meet their specific needs; or
- a real-time chat session with a Rice-employed mental health professional or verified student volunteer, with the option for video chat as well.
- a chat with GPT-3 trained for mental health information
University life carries with it a lot of stress. Yet, given Rice’s consistent placement at the top of the national “happiest student” rankings, many believe that mental health concerns are not relevant to our students.
This couldn’t be more false — surveys conducted every few years indicate that Rice's student body closely follows nationwide trends in many aspects of mental health. Consequently, the university offers a plethora of resources, such as the Wellbeing Office, the Counseling Center, and Student Health Services, to address student needs when they inevitably arise.
Nevertheless, the characterization of Rice’s campus as one filled with the “happiest students” in the country can make seeking help from these resources feel like a stigmatizing, shameful, and isolating experience. Compounded by multiple stories of Rice student services breaching confidentiality and compelling students to unenroll or take time off in response to self-reported mental health concerns, the need for a streamlined and anonymous mental health resource like Remedy becomes clear.
To further punctuate this need, we talked to licensed therapists and other stakeholders and implemented their suggestions in just 36 hours. These conversations were invaluable to us in building Remedy to be a useful resource and tool for Rice students.
- Texting-like interface for easy and intuitive communication
- End-to-end encryption and anonymous access.
- Seamless video chat integration
- Verification for mental health professionals like therapists, RHAs, and STRIVE liasons
- Convenient access to details on all mental health resources available on campus
- AI-enabled mental health resource bot
- Multiple language support
- Chatbot with more training to user input for expedited resource suggestion
- Option for users to share statistics about the type of crisis they are facing to Rice health services for more accurate mental health reporting
- Svelte & SvelteKit (frontend)
- Supabase (backend)
- Web Crypto API (cryptographic primitives)
- Tailwind & Daisy (ui & design)
- Jitsi (video calling)
- GPT-3 for natural language processing and artificial intelligence