Competition in Mental Health
As time goes on and the project continues, the need to understand the competitive market for my project becomes more prevalent. Since my last post, I finally decided on a solid idea and deliverable for my project! I will be creating a mental health organization aimed at helping adolescents and their parents cope with their changing brains and the common mental disorders that come with it. It’s not a new idea, but it is more refined than other mental health resources out there. A bit of competition includes the National Institute of Mental Health, Better Help, and Reddit.
The National Institute of Mental Health
The National Institute of Mental Health is a government organization that aims to educate about mental health, much like my idea. They have endless resources and articles about mental health and many social media platforms as well. They are widely regarded as the most reputable source for mental health information. Their website is one of the (if not the) biggest source of mental health studies and articles. However, when visiting their website, it is easy to get lost. Their website has grown so large that it is often hard to find a source or specific article . They also have a lot of extra information that an adolescent would have to filter through to find something relevant to them (they have 8 separate “about” pages). There is a lot of information about research, donating, and staff at NIMH which is great if you are looking for a super in depth view of mental health and mental health research, but to an adolescent that is simply trying to find out how to navigate their new brain functions, it is way too much information to comb through. I think for my website, I will stick to information that is relevant specifically to adolescent and the development of these mental disorders. In short, information that they, the consumer, will find most relevant. As an adult with mental health, I might find NIMH’s website to be informative and useful, but I am not the consumer and an adolescent, I believe, would get very overwhelmed.
Better help is a mental health website that aims to match individuals with counselors that can help them with their mental health needs such as answering questions and receiving individual counseling. It is well known for providing good service at a good price. It has a clinical, yet natural style and it’s website is very straightforward in showing the viewer the steps to take in order to find the correct type of service for the consumer’s problem. My website would differ in the way that although it is still focused on mental health and helping those who are recently diagnosed, it will be focused more on information rather than getting people connected with a therapist. Some people cannot afford therapy and if they are an adolescent, as my website will be geared towards, they will need help from a parent to sign up. Some adolescents will not have supportive parents or they will have parents who are unwilling to pay for mental services. Dr. Mental has a great review of the service on their website. They state both pros and cons of the website and can provide a lot of insight! For example, some of the pros are:
- affordable prices
- a simple interface
- convenient
Some cons that are listed are:
- its not easy to get a refund
- a counselor may provide you with generic responses that are not entirely helpful
- response time from a therapist may vary
Overall, it is a good website and mental health resource. There are definitely design principles I can take from this source such as the simple interface, but also ways that I can improve!
Reddit is a social media forum platform that allows its users to talk about anything and everything from mental health to their favorite video game. Although their website and app are not specifically designed for mental health, they are still a worthy competitor as their mental health forums are popular, especially with young people. It is easy to ask other people in an accepting community online about mental health challenges rather than confront people in person about it, so in this way, reddit will have a positive leg up on me. However, because the application is forum based, the information is not always completely correct. Other people can provide insight, but they can also provide information that is more detrimental than it is helpful. In this way, I will have a leg up on reddit. Techcrunch has a great article on their website that details how reddit is aiming to improve their mental health platform. It details how reddit is partnering help text lines and help lines to get users in touch with people who have more information and can also help users that are currently struggling with bad mental health. This is a good step forward for reddit and also proves how it can be a strong competitor for my own organization and website among youths.
Synthesizing
Looking at these competitors, I can synthesize several nuggets of information that I can take and use to improve my own organization and website. These include:
- Keep it simple. One drawback from the NIMH website was that it has grown too large and complicated for a youth to understand. Comparatively, the better help website had a simple website that has been praised by other sources in review. So, one nugget that I think it is important to take away is that my website should be relatively simple.
- Keep it real. By this, I mean the information that I include in my website should be research based to keep it true. That is something that reddit suffers with currently as they are a forum based platform, but the NIMH website does very well as they have their own segment of the organization dedicated to research
- Design for the right market. The NIMH website is more geared towards adults and mental health professionals that already have a basic understanding of mental health. Reddit is a social media platform geared towards youths. It is possible to combine the efforts of both to combine fact and youth accessibility to create an organization/ website that is attractive for youths to use, yet knowledgable enough to give them good information
- Keep it information based. Better help and reddit both fail to provide accurate, relevant information that those struggling can help themselves with. NIMH has knowledgeable information, but does not have much of an organized feel. I can combine both the educational goal of NIMH while keeping the simplicity and style of the other two competitors
- I can keep my audience broad! While my target audience is adolescents, it is a good idea to not limit my audience. This is the pitfall of NIMH. Their target audience already has a base understanding of mental health or is already an adult. There is not a a resource page for adolescents, so they are much less likely to use the site for information. I want to be able to appeal to adolescents, but also keep adults in mind that might be searching for resources to help their children. Regardless, the focus is on adolescent mental health, but the consumer of the website could be of varying ages
- Lastly, I should make sure to have fun with it. I feel like a common detriment of all these designs is that they are trying too hard to be either niche or broad. The better help website does a good job of keeping a simple website, but also making it feel loose. I think having fun with the design and staying centered on the subject will allow me to provide the perfect combination of UX and UI!
