A project called «How does the world feel?«, Aims to use an application for iOS and Android to carry out the world's largest study of mental health during the one-week period beginning October 10. The objective is gather data from ordinary people to identify mental patterns With emotions, this is to provide anonymous data to mental health professionals in an attempt to devise methods to reduce suicide rates globally.
The application is designed to take only a few seconds to use., asking people to select an emotion, then selecting how strongly that emotion is felt, and to finish a couple of other data points, what you are doing and whether you are alone or with others around you.
As a benefit to users, you can get a record of your own data, so they can see what makes you the happiest.
If the application identifies patterns in your own emotions that may need to be addressed, it will inform you of the tools and resources that may be useful to you.
How does the world feel? Is the largest democratic mental health survey in the world, with the aim of collecting more than 70 million emotions. Access to a large international data set means unprecedented understanding of mental health across a very wide demographic and geographic range. All information will be completely open source, which means that any individual, non-governmental organization or company can use the collected information. It should be noted that no personally identifiable information is collected from any participant.
The co-founder of the project, Lee Crockford, said that while physical illnesses receive much more attention than mental illnesses, suicide is a great silent killer.
According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, there are more than 42.000 suicides in the US per year. That's roughly 117 people per day, with 70% of these suicides consummated by men.
The application is free, compatible with iOS 8.3 or higher and supports the Spanish language.