Research Log #3 - Solutionary Project 2020 

Date: Feb. 19, 2020

Name: Dane Hansen
Essential Question: How does depression affect society?
 
Three Points to Prove: #1: Social media is a major contributor in a rise in depression.
                                        #2: The rise of technology has led to an increase in depression and
suicide, but can also be a helpful tool to counter them.
                                        #3: By feeling a real human connection, those suffering from depression
can feel reassured.
 
Point that this Source Proves:   #3: By feeling a real human connection, those suffering from
depression can feel reassured.

Excerpts (These should provide insight into the Point to Prove): 

“Digital behavioral health (BH) tools can help improve or maintain BH conditions such as
depression, anxiety, substance abuse, stress, chronic pain or insomnia; the efficacy of digital self-
care tools can be enhanced via addition of human touch-points.”

“Participants felt that coaching increased the value of the digital tool, with a mean rating of
8.4±1.9 (out of 10).”

“Three-quarters of participants felt that the encouragement coaches provided was the most
helpful aspect, followed by guidance to specific resources (53%), support (51%), connection to
another person (42%), and assurance (40%). These findings were corroborated in the qualitative
data; participants emphasized the value of having personalized suggestions amidst a large
breadth of content, an outside perspective, and greatly appreciated the “human contact in a
digital world.”

“Eighty-one percent of participants reported that they would prefer to work with the same coach
over time whereas 19% would have preferred to talk with a coach in real time.”

Analysis (How does this source support the Point to Prove?): 

This article basically explained how a coaching system could help teens and children who
are having a rough time. It explains that therapy, in a way, can also help children. Although it’s
been mainly used on adults, many childen say that it helps them to feel a real connection. Just
talking to another person made them feel re-assured and that everything would be okay. Also,
since the therapy took place online, it’s easily accessible to more people. I think it’s a good way
to utilize technology and it’s pull over many children. By providing the coaching online, they are
able to provide a useful source that can help those feeling down.
One of the main conclusions found from this study was that kids would actually prefer
the coaching to be done online rather than in person. This was a mainly quantitative study to see
the response to the new BH system on children. Results showed that many of the kids feel
reassured from the coaching, making it less likely for them to act out or make rash decisions.
Even if they only experienced this connection once a week, it would give them something to
look forward to. It could also help them practice opening up which will allow them to see ways
in which they could improve their condition.
Although we don’t have the training or education to implement a coaching system
ourselves, it gave me an idea for what to do for community serivice. We could volunteer to do
more simple tasks and just provide a human connection for those suffering from depression. I
think this would be a good oppurtunity for us to help out and it could really benefit both the
organization and those suffering from depression.

Work Cited (correct MLA format): 

Link A, Lukowski A, Hirsch A The Addition of Asynchronous Chat-Based Coaching to a Digital

Behavioral Health Tool Promotes Support and Personalization iproc 2018;4(2):e11797

This is a reputable and reliable article because, I used ebsco to find this source which is known
as a reliable database which provides scholarly articles for a variety of subjects.
 Student Journal 3

As a group, we collaboratively created the idea to help temporarily reduce student’s stress

and hopefully depression. We want to post funny memes that are popular between teens among

the country that many of our classmates find humorous. If the student laughs, serotonin will be

released into the brain calming and improving their mood. We are still debating whether to create

a scavenger hunt with food at the end of the tunnel by having QR codes to scan that gives a hint

to the next meme. So far, we have created both a written proposal and proposal video. The

written proposal highlights what we hope to accomplish with our project and how we aim to get

there. Since stress has become more and more common within schools especially, our idea to

post memes around school is aimed around making students laugh. In our video, we talked about

how common depression has become in our society and how we plan to combat it with laughter

within our school.

Personally, I’ve still just been doing research. But I came across a ted talk that gave me

an idea that we could implement into our scavenger hunt. It would provide a texting hotline

where people could annonymously open up about their struggles. It would be like that so victims

wouldn’t be afraid to talk. Another idea was to make it an automated text message chain that

sends them memes every day and it would give them a place to reach out at the same time. Since

teens are already on their phones and sending texts, they would be more willing to send one more

opening up about their struggles while staying anonymous. Overall as a group, we’ve been doing

research into different components of depression. My research focuses on the causes and effects

of depression, in particular, technology as a cause and how we could use technology to also help

counter depression. I also thought that for community service we could help out at a place where

we interact with those suffering from depression and hopefully make them feel better.