Augmenting reality for mental health
Supporting Girls to Make Change with Virtual Reality
With the 10th anniversary of the International Day of the Girl in 2022, young girls around the world are still facing challenges to fulfill their potential. As conflict, economic hardship and COVID-19 all affecting girls’ education and physical as well as mental health.
Mental health and well-being are challenges everywhere around the world. The State of Palestine is no different, with an added stigma to those who suffer from mental health problems; and no encouragement to get help. Mental health problems can keep people from living normal lives and placing restrictions on their daily life; despite that treatment to many ailments exist.
Two young Palestinian girls Celine and Misk, have a vision to change that. Through combining their passion for technology and psychology. This plan relies on using virtual reality (VR) to treat phobias around the world through an application they call Feel Free.
“Celine and I were always in the same team. We have always had similar visions,” says Misk one of the founders of Feel Free. She adds that “Celine is interested in psychology, and I am interested in programming.” Together they participated in the Generation Unlimited Youth Challenge, an initiative supported by UNICEF.
No Longer an Idea between Two Friends.
“My friend and I always wanted to be people who can always contribute to society,” says Celine. The idea behind the project came to them after noticing a girl who suffered from her own phobia. Together they began to think of a way to help her.
Through the “Youth Challenge” supported by UNICEF and Generation Unlimited. Celine and Misk were offered a platform to realise their concept. “It helped us look into this situation with practical ways to solve it,” says Celine. During the hackathon UNICEF and its partners brought in trainers and incubators to train youth participants in realizing their idea, and how to make it practical and form a business model for it.
They were no longer working on an idea between two friends, but a start-up that they aim to grow. A new burden they are carrying to help society. But this also gave them hope looking forward, showing that despite their young ages they can also contribute to their communities.
“We felt the value of our work and how our work will impact our society and the world,”-Misk.
Misk says “Celine and I were the youngest of the participants, after winning we feel like youth can have a stronger role in making decisions.” Celine chimed in saying, “we now have a longer more difficult road ahead of us.”
Young women need a safe space to express their fears and worries. The app provides that place to speak without fear of judgement to help people face their mental health issues. “People with stronger personalities can create a stronger society,” says Celine. Feel Free aims to provide doctors to find treatments and diagnosis through VR, helping both the medical sector as well as the community.
Rather than try to reach out to the people with the mental health problems and issues directly, Feel Free is provided to mental health clinics as a service, who in turn reach out to their patients. It also has a website that helps ease access for people. This allows people to reach the help they need to clinics through their website.
The Future is Bright
The girls are still pushing forward with Feel Free to help better the mental health of people. “We hope to raise the awareness towards phobia,” says Misk. Adding that, “It is normal for people to have phobias and even more normal to receive treatment for them.”
“We hope to be able to help people become stronger through Feel Free,” Celine.
What the girls have now is a prototype that they hope will help people believe in the efficiency of VR for their treatment. They also are aiming to expand it into augmented reality (AR) and provide fully customized experiences for patients based on consultations from doctors. While Feel Free in its current form only treats a few phobias, the girls are expanding to include more. They are also working on adding other mental health problems like ADHD and anxiety.
The steadfast determination the girls have shown in their work is reflected in their mission statement. They are young girls with big dreams and a plan to bring them into reality.
