Stress OK

Employing karaoke (audiovisual media) to support people with mental health issues and ultimately reduce their difficulties

‘Stress OK’ is a truck embedded with karaoke services. Its mission is to reduce the stress of everyone and eventually improve the mental health of the community. As shown in the following picture, the truck will be divided into three rooms. Each room will accommodate 1-2 people and be equipped with a karaoke machine for song selection and sound foam soundproof panels. Payment will be made before customers enter the truck. The curtains of each room can be pulled down as of customers’ preferences. Thus, it can be a stress-releasing aid with high flexibility and high privacy. When people of different age groups feel stressed for various reasons, they may enter into ‘Stress OK,’ select a song and sing or even scream. A membership system would be introduced for promotion and retaining customers. Audiovisual media (karaoke) will mainly be used with big data, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality for evaluation and impact measurement. 

The problem we are trying to solve is related to stress and mental health. Since Hong Kong would be the first destination to operate 'Stress OK', we would focus on local statistics first. According to a publication by Mind HK, 61% of Hong Kong adults currently suffer from poor mental well-being, with 1 in every seven people developing a common mental disorder in their lifetime. In 2018, Hong Kong people also ranked the world's fifth-most stressed population. Therefore, mental health problems gradually become more common among Hong Kong people. Several factors contribute to the problem: all work and no play (blaming long working hours, low salaries, and unaffordable housing) and, of course, the Covid-19 pandemic. As for the global, according to the International Committee of The Red Cross, the global pandemic may increase stress exponentially. Thus, 'Stress OK' addresses the needs of Hong Kong people and the world. The significant consequence of the current problem is a more negative and stressful society with everyone losing their smile and feeling even more stressed. We hope to deal with the problem before the consequences get exaggerated and bring more smiley faces to the community. 

Our solution serves everyone with stress, regardless of their stress level, gender, age, and nationality. It can be anyone who feels stressed for the day. They are currently underserved due to a lack of proper and effective government policies aimed at improving mental health. Current policies emphasize that stressed ones can approach various government departments or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) when they are under severe stress and would like to commit suicide. Government and NGOs focus solely on preventing people from harming themselves without reducing their stress levels or solving the root cause. Our solution caters to everyone's demands from high to low-stress levels. In our solution, karaoke (audiovisual media) serves as both entertainment and a stress-relieving aid. With references to the publication by the New Life Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association, singing is a breathing exercise to sweep sadness and frustration. 'Stress OK' will be placed in different areas for different periods. Anyone who shares negative feelings or stress is welcome to use our services. Not only does our solution address the needs of the stressed, but it also creates social impact by raising society's awareness about the wellbeing and emotions of everyone around, showing the importance of mental health. It is not a problem to be hatred, but an issue that should show care and concern. 

We have done our research with potential users by conducting a street interview. We mainly approached students, working classes, and housewives; thus, we could collect opinions from different age groups. Besides the street interview mentioned, we all have volunteering experiences with children and low-income groups. These precious experiences provide us food for thought of how and why these groups of people are stressed and what can be done to reduce their stress level without interruption to their daily lives. Besides, one of the teammates has also attended the Psychological First Aid course held by John Hopkins University. She learned how the RAPID model (Reflective listening, Assessment of needs, Prioritization, Intervention, and Disposition) should be employed to people with high-stress levels at emergencies. During the design and development of our solution, we have also consulted the opinions of various age groups and our potential users by approaching our university classmates, professors, parents, and some colleagues from our part-time work. After collecting their opinions and putting them into practice, we improve our solution to the best through testing, trial, and error. 

The stage of development chosen is 'Concept'. After understanding how stress and mental health problem can be commonly found within the community, we, as future pillars, realized that we should do something for the community by creating social impacts. Thus, we came up with the idea of 'Stress OK'. We have approached different groups of people for research and development. Through the collaboration between groupmates, we developed our idea into a feasible service with a social business model. 

We are adopting four types of technology in total: big data, artificial intelligence, audiovisual media, and virtual reality. First, big data will be used to collect data related to stress levels in different districts in Hong Kong, then evaluate the data collected. The evaluation will help decide and prioritize where the truck should go. Besides big data, artificial intelligence will be adopted to evaluate participants' stress levels before and after employing 'Stress OK'. Participants will be invited to fill in an online survey through a touchscreen panel to rate their stress level before entering the karaoke truck. Then, they will also fill in a follow-up questionnaire 1 and 3 months after they used our services. This will serve as an impact measurement to evaluate whether 'Stress OK' achieves its aims of stress release. Another technology that we will utilize is audiovisual media - karaoke. Songs will be played, and lyrics will be put onto the screen while participants will follow them and sing their songs. Virtual reality can also be embraced by asking participants to wear a specific pair of glasses. Thus, participants will feel that they are singing on stage with their favorite singers. Not only does 'Stress OK" reduce the stress levels, but it also brings surprises to participants while getting in touch with singers through virtual reality. 

Since we haven't launched our solution, we are planning to provide over 31,000 karaoke services to over 10,500 people, assuming that each will consume 3 Karaoke times. 

The main impact goal of 'Stress OK' is to reduce people's stress and increase their life satisfaction. As our name 'Stress OK' goes by, we want different groups of people to understand that it is okay to feel stressed, as far as you know how to release them properly, and karaoke could be a relaxing method. Another impact that we would like to create is social inclusion. There is always a misconception that only students and working classes will be stressed. However, this is not true. Anyone, regardless of their age, may feel stressed due to various encounters of life dissatisfaction. We are all humans with different emotions. Thus, 'Stress OK' encourages everyone to come and sing karaoke. 

First, we will be using the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS). It is a short 5-item instrument designed to measure global cognitive judgments of satisfaction with one’s life. The lower the marks people get on the Scale, the more stressed they are. Below is an example of it. It is also associated with the UN Sustainable Development goals by promoting good health and well-being. Second, since we would like to promote social inclusion, we may actively invite elderlies to 'Stress OK' by sending invitations to different elderly centres for further cooperation and collaboration. 

Three main barriers currently exist as limitations for accomplishing our goals next year. First, it is the legal barrier. We are unfamiliar with the law, and we are not sure whether 'Stress OK' may violate the law or not. Thus, legal-related issues are one of our concerns. Second, it is the financial barrier. Although we have a comprehensive budget for operation and a financial plan to cover our initial costs, we do not have enough financial resources to bring the idea of 'Stress OK' from the developmental stage of 'concept' to 'prototype' or even further stages. Another barrier would focus on how the Covid-19 pandemic affects our operation. Not only does the pandemic increase people's stress level and worsens their mental health, but it also poses challenges to our operation. Since the pandemic, Hong Kong Government has been regulating the operation of different places for public entertainment, like requesting vaccination records, using 'LeaveHomeSafe' (an app that tracks and records people's visits), or even the suspension of places for public entertainment. Therefore, it may limit the time and space that we can operate. 

We are penultimate-year university students majoring in social policy and social entrepreneurship. With our study, we gradually realize that policy may not completely address the needs of everyone, especially in the mental health areas. Thus, we would like to help the community with our effort and ability. We understand the academic stress kids may feel during pandemics since we are all tutoring kids from different backgrounds. Besides, we all have diverse voluntary experiences, like in elderly centers, children with special education needs, the homeless, and low-income families. The experiences lead us to reflect on what difficulties they encounter in their everyday life and how 'Stress OK' can help them. Many reflected that they do not know how to express or vent their emotions. The negative emotions and stress may lead them to do something harmful to themselves and eventually spread to various people around them. Thus, we would like to develop a tool that helps different groups express their negative feelings adequately. Although some disadvantaged groups feel stressed because of different physical needs, like educational and financial needs, we believe 'Stress OK' can reduce their stress level by being a tool for comfortably expressing their emotions. Like the interview that we did on the street, many voiced that karaoke is a way to vent their emotions, so their negative feelings will eventually disappear. 

We are partnering with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Since we are students from the mentioned institution, we are also receiving advice along the process of designing our solution. 

We would prioritize to hire the women suffer from domestic violence, single mum or girls who drop out from high school. We would cooperate with these organisations to approach them.

We are qualified for this prize by using karaoke services in a truck to reduce the stress of women and girls, eventually enhancing their quality of life. 'Stress OK' promotes the idea of 'social inclusion'. Many may think that women and girls are less stressed in life because they mostly stay at home or do not need to study that much to gain a higher degree. Thus, they do not have so much stress compared to what male working class and students may feel. However, this is just a myth. Regardless of our gender, every one of us may feel stressed for various reasons. There are no grounds to ignore women and girls' mental health and quality of life. Therefore, 'Stress OK' is a solution that welcomes everyone to sing on the truck and release their stress comfortably and pleasantly.