Impact of external factors as a basis for building a platform for adolescent mental health

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Rationale. In the modern world, teenagers face a huge number of problems and stressful situations that can affect their mental and emotional state. Some of these problems may include depression, anxiety, violence, drugs and alcohol [1]. In this regard, psychological assistance to adolescents is becoming increasingly necessary. Since adolescents are in a transitional age between childhood and adulthood, providing them with qualified psychological assistance can help them overcome these difficulties and develop a healthy and sustainable mental load. This article discusses the idea of creating a platform, the idea of which is to design a platform for maintaining the mental health of adolescents.

Purpose. Obtaining information about existing analogues of the application and creating the most user-friendly interface for the convenience of further use of the platform.

Methods. Comparative analysis of existing applications available for download and daily use aimed at providing psychological assistance to people.

Results. At the moment, in Russia, several applications are available for download from the Google Play service and subsequent daily use, in which the necessary psychological assistance can be provided. Let’s give examples and compare some sites in order to understand exactly how assistance is provided, as well as their accessibility to the population. The results of the comparative analysis are presented in table 1.

 

Table 1. Comparative analysis of downloadable mental health apps

Name	For whom	Functions	Paid content
Clear — psychologists online	18+	Individual session with a therapist selected and interview, duration 50 minutes	yes
Mindspa	18+	Articles for self-development, psychotherapeutic diary, courses and emergency section help.	yes
I can	0+	Online chat with psychologist, articles, tests and important contacts (hot phones lines and crisis centers).	no

 

Based on the information presented above, we can conclude that at the moment in the Russian Federation there is a lack of attention to mental problems among adolescents, regardless of their age.

In other words, when creating a platform to ensure the improvement and preservation of mental health, it is necessary to place more emphasis on the possibility of live communication with counseling specialists of the profile necessary for a teenager in the form of video and audio calls, as is common among similar platforms for providing psychological assistance.

According to psychologists, various trainings and group work have a positive impact on the behavior and psychological state of adolescents. However, not all problems can be solved by conversation between peers. It is understood that in this service a teenager will be able not only to help someone by communicating with peers with similar problems, but also to receive advice from professional psychologists to solve their problems. Therefore, this platform will differ significantly from existing analogues in that in the application the user will be able to “talk” with teenagers of about their age who have faced a similar problem in their lives [2].

Conclusions. In general, creating an application to improve the mental health of adolescents is a complex task that requires developers not only to have technical knowledge, but also to understand the characteristics of the target audience. The study of existing analogues and the creation of a friendly interface will help make the application as convenient and attractive for users as possible, and taking into account the age characteristics of teenagers will allow you to create an application that will be useful and effective in achieving your goals.

About the authors

Togliatti State University

Email: stasyrez@gmai.com

student, PIb-2106a, Institute of mathematics, physics and information technologies

Russian Federation, Togliatti

Togliatti State University

Author for correspondence.
Email: Onmatveeva@tltsu.ru

Scientific Adviser, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor

Russian Federation, Togliatti

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