Problem Statement

Mental health has been a rising topic for the last few years, when society started to discuss more about this serious issue that impacts the lives of millions. This problem is especially severe for vulnerable populations in Brazil, who face anxiety, depression, and other mental health-related illnesses and have no access to support or treatment.

 

Target Group

Our project aims to support mental health related issues for vulnerable people in Brazil, especially considering the following segmentations: (1) Women, (2) Black People, (3) Ex-Prisoners, (4) Immigrants, and (5) LGBTQIAP+.

 

Proposed Solution 

We understand mental health is a serious problem in our society. The number of reported mental health related-issues has been rising, especially for the vulnerable populations. At the same time, we understand there is a also rising number of initiatives that are providing free access to mental-health-related support and treatment, offered by governments as well as by non-profit organizations, universities, and other institutions. People, however, are not aware of this available materials, and therefore make no use of them. 

 

Considering this scenario, our proposed solution is to create a platform that gathers the maximum number of free mental-health-related materials, including free support and treatment references, good quality articles, relevant videos and podcasts, and further materials. By centralizing these existing contents in one platform, we expect to enable more people to have access to tools and support that will help them to face their issues.

 

The project, therefore, is structured in two parts: the Platform creation and the Platform divulgation. We consider both parts crucial, once even the best imaginable platform wouldn’t add value if it wasn’t reaching the population who needs it. 

 

Hub Activities

To deliver the project, we have structured it into two parts: the Platform  creation and the Platform divulgation. We consider both parts crucial, once even the best imaginable platform wouldn’t add value if it wasn’t reaching the population who needs it. And for each one of these parts, there are a few tasks that our Hub is executing.

 

Regarding the Platform creation, the main tasks are: (1) define the best format and build the platform, (2) search, analyze and select the content that will be uploaded to the platform, (3) regularly monitor and update the platform content. We have already developed a website prototype that is online and already has some content.

 

Meanwhile, for the Platform divulgation part, the main tasks are (1) Analyze/research best channels for the (develop a communication plan), (2) implement the communication plan/execute the communication, and (3) search for financial support to actively share the platform (e.g., social media ads)

 

Short & Long-Term Goals/Results

The main dream of this project is to "reduce the number of mental health related issues, especially considering the defined segmentations. To achieve that, however, we have three sub-goals that we also intent to achieve during the journey: (a) to increase the quality of information that people read, listen, etc. about mental health, (b) to increase the quantity of information the people consume about the topic and (c) to increase the number of support and treatment services that people consume.

 

One relevant aspect of the project that we consider worth mentioning is its scale opportunity. As we are developing a digital platform that gathers existing material online, there is almost no extra cost to expand the impact region beyond our own city. 

 

Available Metrics

To measure the success and the progress of our project, the main metric selected is the number of monthly accesses to the platform. Despite being a non-finalistic indicator, this can be a simple way to measure the overall results of our efforts. Further analysis on how our platform is in fact supporting people with mental-health related issues, is extremely relevant. However, due to the operational complexity and the high costs needed to perform this sort of analysis, the main indicator selected was related to the accesses to the platform.

 

Collaborators

The project is currently being developed in partnership with three other Brazilian Hubs: Salvador, Florianópolis and Joinville. We are also in contact with a few organizations to partner-up, but nothing has been formally officialized yet.

 

Link to the platform: https://globalshaperssp2.wixsite.com/pedeajuda

 

Unfortunately, the project was discontinued due to strategic decisions by the Hubs involved.