Libera

A gamified mental health platform for adolescents, and designed to educate, destigmatise and spread awareness

We aspire to create a platform for the betterment of students' mental health.To access it securely, students will need to log in using a password given to them by their teachers.The first feature available will be webinar series conducted by licensed professionals on topics related to wellbeing.Our aim is to provide students with a platform for connection amid uncertainty, encouraging them to field their questions to the experts and much more to generate awareness amongst students and strengthen demand for integrated mental health in school curriculums.Multiple activities will be posted often, to elevate student engagement in hybrid classes.Interactive question sessions will be hosted by counsellors where students can anonymously ask questions.Biweekly, students can opt to take part in a group call, where they can talk with peers and counsellors and receive an opportunity to share in a safe space and socialise.The intention of these sessions is to destigmatise mental health and to get students comfortable with talking about it, especially since our survey responses concluded that 73% of students are uncomfortable with discussing mental health.Our site is set apart by the gamified elements which we will explain in detail later.

Mental health has always been a taboo subject in India, however during the course of this pandemic, many people have started to pay more attention to mental wellbeing. Mental health is something that everyone will have to deal with at some point in their life. Schools need to be portraying mental health as equally important and crucial as physical health and academic excellence. 

The problem- As of now, students are not taught any information about their mental wellbeing within school unless the school makes a special effort. This leads to poor awareness, which in turn leads to all sorts of problems. Not only do we not know how to understand mental wellbeing, but as a result, we might not ask for help when we need it.
Recently, we conducted a global survey amongst students, and around 92% of them mentioned that they had experienced at least a few issues with their mental and social wellbeing during the pandemic. 73% experienced feelings of depression and isolation due to social distancing. Lack of interaction with classmates led to a loss of motivation.
It's not just students, teachers have also been struggling with similar issues as well. Due to the stress caused by the transition from offline to online school, many of them believe that there is minimal productivity and feel unaccomplished. 

This is the problem we plan on solving.

Our solution serves teenagers between the ages of 13-17.

Globally, 10–20% of adolescents suffer from mental health conditions.This statistic is likely to be affected by the vulnerability of adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic.Due to the importance of peer relationships in adolescence, consequences of pandemic measures, such as school closures, may be difficult for this population.Exposure to pandemic-related stressors is likely to be associated with increases in anxiety, depression, and behavior problems in adolescents.

Our solution will help educate students about mental health and wellbeing. Many children don't even know when they're going through depression or anxiety. They're not even able to speak up even if they're aware of what they're going through due to the mental health stigma in their communities. 

We aim to teach them about the importance of mental health in an engaging way and also tell them how to get help if they/one of their loved ones are going through mental health issues.Our platform will help students learn to talk about issues they're facing with counsellors, while also acting as a means of connection between them and their friends so they don't feel isolated during lockdowns. Students can book 15 minute individual therapy sessions if they need more help, and they're completely free.

Libera.com aims to serve as a means of education, awareness, and connection.We wish to give teens a spark of hope in these trying times.

To understand the needs and feelings of adolescents around the world, we ran several global surveys so we could better understand our userbase. According to our surveys, a whopping 92% had gone through some form of mental distress during the pandemic, with 42% going as far as to say that they had experienced panic and anxiety attacks often. This is when we decided to make a platform to help students who were going through these thing.

We researched possible domain names ('liberateen.com') and figured out what web hosting company (AWS) we'll use to get our domain name on the internet.

We took opinions from more than a 100 students from our school and worked with them on the design and features of our website. We spoke with teachers and parents so we could get more insights. 

We also spoke with and interviewed family counsellors and therapists so we could get as much information about adolescents' mental health and wellbeing, while also doing extensive research of our own.

So far, we have made a fully functioning mockup of the website, and will be able to complete it when we get the necessary funding. We have interviewed several students who went through mental health issues during quarantine, and have worked with them on the design and features of the website. We have also contacted several psychologists and family counsellors, and have started working with them on the webinars and content which will soon be uploaded on the website. Since this is a very complex problem we're trying to solve, we have done a lot of research into the mental health od adolescents throughout the pandemic, and the best ways we can get them the help they need. And lastly, we have been working on finding and purchasing a domain for the website and linking up servers, so that it can finally be ready for public use.

The main feature of our website is gamification. This is what makes our website stand out.Libera.com plans on changing mental health education for the better, by integrating game mechanics into awareness. Increased videogame usage by teens makes this a fun, new way of educating the new generation. We plan to add mental health “checkpoints”, leaderboards, badges, and many more features!

Gamification is so effective in learning because the learner forgets they are “working” and instead feels they are “playing.”It also gives the user a sense of control and helps them feel engaged. Udemy, a course website, is a good example. The users can pick a course they want and are in charge of clicking 'next lesson'.Their gamified system puts the user in control at all times. It’s a simple trick, but we get a kick out of making our own decisions.Students receive a sense of achievement. Achievement is the most powerful psychological driving factor of human behaviour. By displaying your progress against set goals, users are compelled to beat it next time around.Any website that makes use of leaderboards and top scores instantly triggers that natural instinct to compete! Another factor is community and collaboration. We are social animals, which is why we love multi-player games.This translates well to gamification.We make users feel immersed in the community on their journey, by having forum features on our website, along with group achievements.

As our website isn't launched yet, it currently doesn't serve anyone. However, after our website is up and running, we first plan to implement it in our school. Then we hope to collaborate with other schools in Bangalore. When we first set up the accounts in our school, about a 1000 high school students will be able to use it. If we decide to expand the user base to middle school students as well, and additional 500 kids will be using the website. I don't think we can collaborate with more than 3 schools in the coming year, as we just started Libera.com in the past month, however, we still hope to expand as much as possible. After Vidyashilp Academy, we hope to implement it in Inventure Academy, another private school in Bangalore. We had first come up with this idea when entering their changemakers competition, and since we have gotten selected for the final rounds, we are working on collaborating with their own student mental health platform 'letsconnect.org' (an initiative created by Inventure Academy and several other schools) so we can set up accounts for students in Inventure Academy as well in the next few months.

> Publish the website fully

> Set up social media counts and gain large followings to increase our reach as much as possible. Set some money apart for promoting our Instagram account so it reaches a lot more people

> Set up accounts for all high school students in Vidyashilp and Inventure Academy

> Have atleast 1700 students using our website

> Collaborate with foundations and platforms like letsconnect.org, themoodspace, and The MINDS foundation and partnering with youth based NGOs

> Recruit at least 50 volunteer mentors and counsellors who are willing to help us and have the time to do so. We can use marketing tools on social media sites such as Instagram/other websites, so people can learn about and join Libera.com if they're looking for a job.

> Crowdfund 20000 usd to cover the costs of sustaining the website. We plan on seeking funding and grants from several corporates as well.

> Focus more on underprivileged schools and rural areas, start an initiative to donate old laptops/phones to children who don't have access to any technology

This proposal is directly related to SDG 3 (good health and wellbeing) 

We will conduct more surveys over time and gather enough data, then we will be able to compare the results of the survey taken post-solution to the survey taken before it was implemented. 

Teachers will be asked if the students have been performing better at school as 87% of students who took our survey believed that their mental and social wellbeing had a direct impact on their performance at school. We will ask students for their opinions on the website, and will constantly update it to improve our website based on their feedback.

The main barriers are financial. Though we have gathered some funds from kickstarter, we still haven't found a sustainable source of income. Libera is non-profit and you don't need to pay to access it, so we wont be able to gain any income from the website. 

Since we are also looking to focus on rural areas and underprivileged schools (though it isn't really a requisite in our plan, we really do want to bring in mental health awareness into communities that aren't educated about it), we also need to provide the students with computers or phones, as some of them might not have access to technology. 

The legal barriers : To copyright and trademark Libera when we release it as an official website.

The cultural barriers : Students and teachers may be unwilling to try out our website due to the stigma around mental health in India. These are a few of the the challenges we might face in the future. However, with proper finances, contacts, and mentorship, we believe that we can efficiently tackle these problems.

We are especially well positioned to deliver this solution because our website is made for students, by students and we can provide valuable insights from the perspectives of our target audience. Throughout this pandemic, we've interacted and talked with our peers, some of whom were going through periods of depression and anxiety. We know how to provide support and appeal to our target audience, and have had enough experience to know what works. 

We also have had experience coding several websites, and even though we've never built a website at such a large scale, development seems to be going smoothly. It wont be an issue if we run into any problems, as we have contacted several software engineering students who are willing to help, from a college in our community. We've always been passionate about coding and website building and we're happy to use our skills in a project which can make a difference.

Currently, we aren't partnering with any organisations, other than letsconnect.org. There are some organisations we would love to reach out to to maximise the benefit of Libera.com. Some of them are

Apart from the fact that both of our team members are young girls passionate about making a difference, our solution focuses on one of the sustainable development goals ( number 3), good health and wellbeing.

Women are often not taken seriously about their mental health when they speak out about it, and are forced to suffer in silence, and girls in several communities are not educated about mental wellbeing. They are more likely to develop depression and other issues due to gender bias and violence. Our team hopes to provide the necessary resources and help.

Libera.com aims to create a safe space for young girls and women to learn and communicate. 

We aren't qualified for the Pozen Prize.