Alex Boyd
CoMinded
CoMinded is a project which focuses on the topic of anxiety and depression among college students during the COVID-19 Pandemic. My target audience is college students that struggle with anxiety and depression, especially during the COVID-19 Pandemic. From my own personal experiences as a college student during the pandemic, I have had feelings of isolation, loneliness, and disconnection, especially from instructors and schoolwork.
I have also had feelings of self-doubt about my schoolwork, while the schoolwork is an overload and way harder than it should be. I have also had physical inactivity because of feelings of depression and anxiety.
During my research, I found a handful of effects or outcomes that occurred among college students that have experienced anxiety and depression during the pandemic. In a survey posted by the National Institutes of Health, 195 students at a public university were surveyed on the effects on their mental health and well-being. 138 (71%) had increased stress and anxiety due to the pandemic.
Stressors that contributed to this included fear and worry about their health and their loved ones, less social interactions, lack of sleep and bad sleeping patterns, and increasing concerns about academic performance. Some other effects conducted in the survey include concentration difficulty, unhealthy eating patterns and or habits, changes in living environment, feelings of isolation, financial difficulties, increased class workload, negative thoughts, and suicidal thoughts.
The Mayo Clinic has reported, as of the published date of the article on September 7, 2021, that 44% of college students have reported symptoms of anxiety and depression. Mayo Clinic claims that suicide is the third leading cause of death for college students. They have reported that 30% of students reported feeling depressed in the past year, half of students reported feeling overwhelmingly anxious in the past year, and nearly two-thirds of students who developed substance abuse problems also were found to suffer from mental health disorders, such as anxiety and depression.
My goal and rationale are to find/create new ways to help college students ease out their anxiety and depression caused by the pandemic and to connect with their peers that also feel anxious and depressed, i.e. get out of a depressive state and get back to a pre-pandemic state of mind because the stressors found in college students given above.
My solution for anxiety and depression and its stressors is an app that connects college students that struggle with their mental health with each other by joining events in the area and joining groups in the app based on interest. To with the app is a mailer a box filled with items for the user’s next event as a “thank you” for downloading the app.
