Hello! So I'm a software developer of sorts who also has had some serious emotional issues in the past. I've visited therapists and psychiatrists and have been asked multiple times to keep track of my mood and how certain events affected it. However, there aren't really many or any good tools on the market, and none that have a very attractive looking UI, which for me is a must if I'm going to use an app or website regularly. And they all tend to be overly complicated and ask things that don't relate to me, or they don't have options to track things I want them to. And none of them that I know of remind me to use them, and I'm terrible at remembering things.

So I've been considering building one of my own. First I'd start with a website and then build an app that including mood tracking and mood graphs/other visualizations (maybe pie charts with the amount of positive days vs. negatives days in a week or month). This would include a customizable check-in, which could be as easy as something that takes 30 seconds if that's what the client wanted. It also would have options to send your graphs/check-ins to a friend/family member at any time or on a scheduled basis (everyday, weekly, monthly) Another important feature is that you could set it to give you reminders, either through email or push notifications on the apps, or both! These could be once daily, or multiple times a day depending on how often someone wanted to check in.

However, I have another idea that would be part of my app and site. Mental health professionals could have professional accounts, and they could have their clients add them as their therapist/psychiatrist. And then the professionals would in turn have the ability to view all their patients' mood graphs/check-ins. The mood graphs would also include events added in by the patient, so that it would be easy to tell how their mood responded after certain life event's, perhaps a death in the family or a break-up, or alternatively something positive. (work promotion, new relationship, etc.) You could go through their events, and view graphs for the week(s) or month after a certain event as well, to see how things responded to that. An event could be taking them off a certain medication or putting them on a different one for that matter!

Another feature it would have would be automatic notifications when someone checked-in as being dangerously depressed or specifically marked that they felt like a danger to themselves or others. Their linked therapist and psychiatrist would automatically be notified by text and email. (and probably the therapist/psychiatrist's version of the app as well if they had it on their phone through a push notification) As well, other emergency contacts could be added like a friend or family member, who the app would also automatically contact through text or email. And in the meantime it would bring up a list of resources/phone #s for the patient to get help in the meantime.

Would you, as mental health professionals, be interested in a service like this? Also, are there legal obstacles I would face with this? If this service was well built, and met all the current security standards, would you be willing to pay to have a "professional" account to keep track of your clients. And if you are interested in the idea, would you be willing to pay anywhere from $1 to $30 in a KickStarter in order to fund development and maintenance costs while it's in the early stages? Thank you for any input!