Penn State Behrend Students Create An App For Mental Health
Stressed, over whelmed and over worked. Those are just some of the words college students have used to describe their last year, all while trying to navigate getting their degree. For a group of clinical psychology majors at Penn State Behrend, they recognized the need for mental health services during these tough times. Now, going into April without a spring break, many students are feeling the pressure. Christopher Shelton is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at Penn State Behrend. He helped guide the students in making the app, Serene.
"By no means is this an active mental health application. We're not providing active healthcare, or access to clinicians but we are providing content based on our site theories and literature we know can help, like behavioral activated actives," says Shelton.
Erica Juriasingani, and Shelton along with a handful of other Penn State Behrend students have spent the last year of the pandemic developing the app.
"It was a project of love, I think for all of them," says Shelton.
For Juriasingani, she's a senior at Behrend studying psychology. She knows how hard this last year has been on everyone, and especially those in college.
"My favorite thing about this app is being able to track the progress because I like to be able to know okay how was I feeling on this day," says Juriasingani.
For many students, they've been stressed during this last semester. Now, with no spring break, Juriasingani says this app is perfect to help tracking how you feel.
"With all that years worth of frustration pent up, it's very important to have that app to try and manage that and try to calm that feeling of like, I want to say it's your 'flight or fight response' kind of enacting. You want to fall into that but you really can't," says Juriasingani.
She says being successful in and out of the classroom all comes back to how you feel.
"It's very important right now because you can't be a successful student, a participating member of society if you're not caring for yourself," says Juriasingani.
That's why she made serene, to help everyone track, manage and be mindful about how they feel.
"Okay, I was sad or frustrated or happy during this period of time what was happening what can I do to rework that as well as give them idea they haven't thought about," says Juriasingani.
For the app Serene, developers say they're still working to improve all of the features and make it more widely available to all platforms.
