Del revés: una aplicación para conocerte a ti mismo

Abstract

[en] According to data from the WHO (World Health Organisation), in an article published on 17 June 2022, in 2019, almost one billion people, including 14% of adolescents worldwide, were affected by a mental disorder. Suicides accounted for more than one in every 100 deaths and 58 per cent of them occurred before the age of 50. Mental disorders are the leading cause of disability and are responsible for one in six years lived with disability. People with severe mental disorders die on average 10 to 20 years earlier than the general population, most often from preventable physical illnesses. Depression and anxiety increased by more than 25% in the first year of the pandemic alone. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, only a small percentage of people in need had access to effective, affordable, and quality mental health care. For example, 71% of people with psychosis worldwide do not receive mental health services. For depression, gaps in service coverage are wide in all countries: even in high-income countries, only one-third of people with depression receive formal mental health care, and minimally adequate treatment for depression is estimated to range from 23% in high-income countries to 3% in low- and lowermiddle-income countries. This project has involved psychological research and the design and development of an app useful as a tool to support the initiation of psychological therapy. The application is designed with the aim of enabling people to get to know themselves better on an emotional level, as well as helping them to manage certain emotions. The application is multi-platform, the main device is the mobile phone, although it can also be accessed via the web. The application consists of a main activity, called a thought diary, which consists of indicating what emotion you are experiencing at that moment, what bodily and behavioural sensations you are having, for what reason and what you would learn, change, maintain and foresee from the way you have managed the situation that has made you feel this way. From the thought diary, depending on what emotion you are feeling, activities will be created to help you manage your emotions. In addition, you can consult the answers you have given, and the results obtained at any time. Information about the psychological foundations behind these activities can also be accessed at any time, so that the user can understand what is being done and why. For the implementation, tools provided by Google have been used: Flutter and Firebase. Flutter is an open-source framework for the development of multiplatform applications (mobile, web and desktop). Its programming language is Dart, very similar to Java, which has been used for the development of the mobile and web application. Firebase, which is a digital platform designed for web and mobile application development, has been used for hosting, authentication, and database.