
Ask HN: I'm 15, won a grant to develop a suicide prevention app, what next? - krrishd
Some background:
I&#x27;m 15 years old, attend high school, do well in terms of grades and extracurriculars (business clubs&#x2F;competitions), and also am a pretty good front-end developer experienced with HTML&#x2F;Jade,CSS&#x2F;LESS, JS&#x2F;jQuery&#x2F;AngularJS, and Phonegap&#x2F;Cordova. I&#x27;ve worked on several web projects in the past, such as http:&#x2F;&#x2F;teen2geek.com, and my portfolio is at http:&#x2F;&#x2F;krrishd.github.io, just to get an idea of what I can do in web development (not so good at the backend though).<p>I recently took part in a social entrepreneurship competition to prevent suicide, and I envisioned a specific app, and the idea won a grant. This app is somewhat similar to some social networks you&#x27;ve seen, and is a bit complex to develop for a front-end guy like me. The grant is a &quot;micro-grant&quot;, so it isn&#x27;t anything substantial, and I&#x27;m not sure if outsourcing can retain the quality necessary for such an app.<p>What do you think I should do?
======
liyanchang
I would encourage you to write the entire thing, frontend, backend, content,
PR releases, etc.

Two reasons:

1\. You're young and still figuring out what you love doing; no better time to
experiment and learn. I still have fond memories over the php site I wrote in
high school. You could visible tell which functions were written at the
beginning of the project versus the end because you'll improve drastically.
[1]

2\. The project will be more successful with someone who cares for it. Hiring
a contractor will make it difficult for you to maintain and improve.
Contractors will also expect a specification with penalties if you need to
change it. My guess is that you're still experimenting with what can best
serve the community so this probably isn't a good fit for contracting as well.

[1] Recommended tech stack (optimizing for documentation and availability of
help). Ruby, MongoDB, Heroku (or if ambitious, Linux on Amazon EC2 + nginx).
Everything else is pretty similar so once you learn these, the concepts apply
reasonably well.

p.s. If money is a concern, you should look into contacting some companies
PR/DevRel people and see if they are willing to donate some compute time or
services to your cause. (It's probably doing this after launch and getting a
better sense of usage and will be easier to convince them that you're legit).

~~~
curun1r
If he's already familiar with front-end development, I'd recommend something
like Meteor rather than Ruby. Because it's JavaScript, it will seem a lot more
familiar than Ruby. And it will hide a lot of the complexity of client-server
interaction until the point when you feel like diving into it. It's really
perfect for fast prototyping and proof-of-concept sites like the poster is
looking to build.

~~~
pa5tabear
Doesn't it have major scaling problems? I've seen many recommendations that
it's not yet ready for anything with complexity.

------
tokenadult
You are working on something important, and I was glad to read (and upvote) a
lot of the other comments you received, and especially the offers for pro-bono
help. One comment below suggested that you read the literature (I presume that
means the literature about suicide prevention) and I would second that advice.
To expand that advice a bit, I'll note that Martin E. P. Seligman and some
other psychologists who have studied depression and suicide think that the
"self esteem" movement that took over United States schools after I graduated
from high school may have actually INCREASED risk of suicide in the United
States--certainly the rates of both attempted and completed suicide, and the
rate of diagnosed youth depression, went up over the years when those school
programs were put in place. In other words, don't just rely on intuition about
what would be helpful, but look into actual research. Seligman's books
_Learned Optimism_ [1] and _The Optimistic Child_ [2] are both helpful,
although there should be some even newer research out by now. Reading those
books may help you deal with the challenges of working on this interesting
project while keeping up with your school work. Best wishes.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Learned-Optimism-Change-Your-
Mind/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/Learned-Optimism-Change-Your-
Mind/dp/1400078393)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Optimistic-Child-Depression-
Resili...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Optimistic-Child-Depression-
Resilience/dp/0618918094/)

~~~
itistoday2
I second the advice to familiarize yourself with the literature, and would
like to add a strong word of caution at the same time.

A disclaimer: I speak out of personal experience with this topic, and I did
not read most of the comments that you've already received (sorry, wish I had
the time).

So here's my word of caution:

You must be aware that you are intentionally brainwashing yourself into a
biased worldview by reading all of these books on suicide prevention.

Every book on suicide prevention has the premise that suicide is "bad", after
all, that is why the author wrote it, and that is what they are trying to
prevent.

It does not matter a lick how scientific their "data points are", if the
premise that they are starting out with is based on a biased point of view.

You will join their ranks if you don't keep this in mind.

Therefore, in addition to all of the literature on suicide prevention that you
read, I strongly recommend reading literature that supports suicide.

Books that support suicide use a different word, but it is the same thing.
These books employ the same linguistic trick that books attempting to prevent
suicide use: they use words.

Words have unspoken meaning associated with them, that only exists ephemerally
in the culture in which they are used. You may or may not find this hidden
meaning in dictionaries.

These two words have in fact the exact same meaning, when it comes to the end
act. Their meaning only slightly diverges when you take the cultural
connotation and circumstances surrounding their use. Nevertheless, they really
should be treated (by you) as synonyms, because the reasons that the people
you are trying to prevent from killing themselves are usually the same in each
case.

Word #1: Suicide

    
    
        - the action of killing oneself intentionally:
        - a course of action that is disastrously damaging to oneself
          or one's own interests
    

Word #2: Euthanasia

    
    
        - the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable
          and painful disease or in an irreversible coma. The practice
          is illegal in most countries.
    

For your project, I will throw a devil's advocate accusation at you, and call
you, and anyone in this thread who supports your cause, a terrorist and/or
sadist. I will accuse you of in fact not helping people, but misguidedly (due
to complete and utter ignorance on your part) torturing people by encouraging
them to experience more suffering.

Further, I will claim that unless you can see this point of view, your project
will be an utter failure, and will not achieve any success beyond what
existing measures have achieved.

To understand suicide, you have to understand wanting to kill yourself, and
you cannot understand this intellectually, you have to have experienced it
yourself (or have a great "emotional imagination", aka ability to empathize).
How can you help anyone with a concept that you have no understanding of
yourself? That is the road to failure.

Suicide is a very rational reaction to life. I've seen people call those who
want to kill themselves "selfish", when it's clear that it is the other person
who is selfish, and wants the person to stick around and suffer, only to spare
themselves suffering.

So, to start you off, you may want to compliment your reading by familiarizing
yourself with real suicide notes, before you even think about writing a single
line of code. Here are some I found via some googling (I cannot vouch for
their authenticity though):

[http://theholydark.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/some-
painfully-e...](http://theholydark.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/some-painfully-
edifying-reading-suicide-notes/) (references this page that is no longer
online:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20130112214925/http://www.well.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130112214925/http://www.well.com/~art/suicidenotes.html)
)

~~~
EdwardDiego
Way to dump your own depressive tendencies on a 15 year old. Jesus.

~~~
itistoday2
_Way to dump your own depressive tendencies on a 15 year old. Jesus._

^-- A perfect example of the ignorance that I mentioned, thank you.

To Krish: remember, people who contemplate suicide are constantly faced with
such ignorance, and so in the cultures where such attitudes are common,
suicide happens unexpectedly (and this is most of the world). Then people
"wish they could have said how much they loved them", etc. etc.

~~~
EdwardDiego
Ignorance? Oh my. Unfortunately, I satisfy your criteria required for
understanding suicide, so I vehemently disagree with your assertion that
"Suicide is a very rational reaction to life."

Especially when we're discussing teenagers, who haven't even lived one fifth
of their expected lifespan.

~~~
DanBC
> Especially when we're discussing teenagers,

...and who haven't finished cognitive development.

------
simonw
This is a likely to be a very challenging project. A few things to consider:

* Anonymity is vitally important, especially since you are an inexperienced programmer with a high risk of introducing security holes. Don't collect any personal details (including email addresses) that could cause problems for people if they were leaked. Don't implement Facebook or Google signin!

* If there are any social components at all, consider the potential impact of trolls. This project may require 24/7 moderation.

* This is a major emotional commitment. Talking down suicidal strangers is not something to go in to lightly! Make sure you have a professional advisory network in place.

Since lots of people have offered to help, I suggest getting them added to a
mailing list ASAP while they are interested.

You could consider building the project in public on GitHub - that would allow
technical advisors to review your code for you and use the issue tracker to
discuss features.

~~~
boha
Simon's spot-on here as to why Google/Facebook/etc. would be a bad move. The
first impulse of most projects is to pull in social, so being mindful of how a
user is asked to approach your app is a great place to start.

Cole Stryker has written a couple neat books on the (often constructive) power
of anonymous social networks —
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/1590209745](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1590209745) —
although the chasm between Anonymous and a teen support network may be too far
to bridge.

------
bartonfink
I'm quite interested in suicide prevention, having lost several friends to
suicide over the years. I'd do it pro bono. If you're interested, let me know
- my e-mail is in my profile.

~~~
krrishd
To everyone interested in helping- I would definitely love to get all the help
possible from you guys, so I'll make this an open-source project. I'm figuring
out th logistics of everything right now, I'll try to contact you guys with
more details as soon as possible. Thanks guys, I'm really looking forward to
this :)

~~~
jayhuang
Also willing to help. This is something that hits very close to home for me.
I've done both front-end and back-end work.

~~~
krrishd
Hi,

I've created a github project here - [http://github.com/krrishd/suicide-
prevention](http://github.com/krrishd/suicide-prevention)

------
TelmoMenezes
Congrats man, well done!

This list of cognitive distortions and how to fix them might be relevant:
[http://www.apsu.edu/sites/apsu.edu/files/counseling/COGNITIV...](http://www.apsu.edu/sites/apsu.edu/files/counseling/COGNITIVE_0.pdf)

This was created by Dr. David Burns and is supported by research in cognitive
therapy. The full information is available in his book "Feeling Good". The
interactive medium could afford some interesting possibilities.

Another thing that I remember reading is that tracking your happiness level
and sharing that information with others seems to improve mood. Somebody was
experimenting with this on the web. Seems like a perfect fit for a social app.

I second the opinion that you should make sure that you pay attention to
research. Some common sense approaches might be counter-productive. For
example, the cliché: "suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem"
can make suicide sound even better to the seriously depressed. Be suspicious
of common sense here.

~~~
flippmoke
As someone who has read "Feeling Good" and is married to a therapist, I can
not suggest this book enough. The general method is called Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy (CBT):
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy)

The key idea is that our thoughts control how we feel, not the events or
surroundings of our lives. A person who is considering suicide often has a
very different view of events because of their thought process. The idea of
CBT is to change the way you think and by doing so you are able to feel
differently about the events in your life.

However, I would never suggest that someone simply start applying CBT on their
own with out some guidance. I am very nervous about how you want to make this
a social application. Depression can be a very personal and embarrassing
disease for a person and even positive encouragement can cause more
depression.

Lets say we have a kid named Stan. Stan is a very depressed kid who is
considering suicide. He manages to let his friend Bobby know that he has been
considering killing himself. Bobby is shocked as Stan is a very bright and
successful kid. Bobby tells Stan that he 'can't believe that Stan would want
to do such a thing' and that 'he has so much to live for.' Bobby thinks that
he is helping Stan, but Stan views this very differently. Stan thinks, 'No one
understands me, Bobby is just saying that to make me feel better.' While the
temporary relief of telling someone was something that Stan really wanted to
do, in the end it only ends up making him feel more depressed.

The reason behind this sort of thinking is because of the Cognitive
Distortions. Stan's perception of reality is vastly different because of them.
It is for this reason that I am concerned about how you make this a social
application. In my opinion the best thing you can do for a person who is
considering suicide is to get them to a trained professional.

~~~
aestra
I would recommend Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) over CBT.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_behavior_therapy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_behavior_therapy)
As I understand it DBT is better at validation of emotions than CBT.

~~~
flippmoke
That is likely because CBT attempt to focus on your emotions, but rather on
your thoughts that cause your emotion. I have not heard of DBT though
honestly, and I am far from an expert on CBT, but will have to read more on
both now.

~~~
aestra
I have had personal success with DBT practiced in a clinical setting. A lot of
the skills taught are really great life skills that are applicable to everyone
not just those with psychiatric conditions.

It seems DBT builds off of CBT.

------
lifeisstillgood
One other thing, no matter what, this is your project.

All the advice you get here, much of it good, and all the advice you will get
throughout the project (especially if you open source it on github which I
highly recommend) is for you to assimilate and then build into your opinion.

Listen to experienced dev's telling you why and why not a particular course
will work, listen to people here on the research and the unintuitive nature of
suicide, but in the end this grant was given because you seemed to have an
insight or a gleam in your eye.

Trust that gleam, and tell us lot to go hang, if you think you are being
pushed into something that in your _informed opinion_ is not the best for the
app.

And remember, Its not the only suicide prevention work out there, so the
weight of the world is not on your shoulders - your job is to do a good job
and be proud of the work. Let the world decide if thats going to solve its
problems or not.

Good luck and all the best

~~~
pa5tabear
"....tell us lot to go hang"

Perhaps not the most appropriate choice of words

------
throwsaway
Suicide prevention /app/? You don't stop suicide with an app. You're 15 and
you have a grant for a gimmick. I'm 22 and I'm unemployed. I'm already
depressed but this makes me angry, too, so I just made an account to let you
know that this disgusts me. Empty words. At least your resume looks better
with this.

~~~
krrishd
I'm sorry that his makes you feel this way.

1\. I am in no way experienced with suicide, I just thought this idea up for a
contest, but it actually won, and I felt the obligation to at least try to
make it a reality.

2\. This app is not really aimed at people already dealing with severe stages
of depression, many organizations and suicide hotlines are already doing that
well. This is more towards people only starting to feel issues that could
worsen to lead to suicide, catching the issue early on.

Again, sorry if that's how it seems, but I'm just trying to help out in any
way that I could possibly.

~~~
aestra
>many organizations and suicide hotlines are already doing that well.

These organizations are for much more than that. The National Suicide
Prevention Line is there for your "smaller" problems too. There are more, too.
Best of all, these are trained professionals, not 15 year olds.

------
gohrt
This is a serious project. Please find a licensed psychologist to partner with
as you develop and test your app and prepare it for release.

~~~
spinlock
I can't second this suggestion strongly enough. The technology will be the
easy part. Connecting with people who need help will be very difficult. I
don't even want to think about how hard it will be to protect against the
trolls.

OP: I would recommend starting by interviewing your guidance councillor at
school and any psychologists, social workers, etc.. that you know or can be
introduced to. At the end of every interview, ask the interviewee who else you
should talk to. Ask for an introduction. Always thank these people for their
time (an email is a must but including a handwritten note a month later will
pay huge dividends). If someone really impresses you, ask if they would like
to be on your board of advisors. Pack your board with the best people you can
find and meet with them regularly.

Good luck!

------
hosh
Awesome! I know other folks here question whether your approach actually
prevents suicide. Personally, I respect your gumption and initiative to carry
this out.

I hope you get offers to work on the backend with you. If not, here are some
ideas:

(1) Find a like-minded person at meetup groups. The Atlanta Ruby User Group,
for example, has a contingent actively working on public good kind of apps,
things more for non-profit work than for-profit work. While your local
technical meetup group is a good place to start, there is nothing stopping you
from emailing the ATLRUG mailing list and asking. There are other platform
meetups you can try, like ones for Node.js, Erlang/Elixir, various Python
groups, etc.

(2) Use the Tim Ferris method of calling up famous people. You never know.
Being someone versed in JS, you could try Resig, or Katz, or the AngularJS
core folks. You could also try one of the startup CEOs/CTOs you admire. I
don't think someone's work should be judged on the novelty of being young, but
it happens (people think, could I have pulled it off at your age?) Older folks
who have amassed experience and power like teaching and mentoring young
people, as it is not as threatening to one's power base as young competition.
You might not necessarily get such a person to work directly with you on the
code, but you're likely to get access to a network that you normally would not
have access to.

(3) Scour the web for other similar competitions and contact the winners.
Maybe you can trade.

Good luck!

------
ancarda
I've lost people to suicide and I've felt suicidal myself so I'm very
interested to know what the app does. What will it do to reduce suicides?

------
C1D
I too am 15 years old. I'm currently working on a secure chat alternative to
things like kik, what's app and skype. I've been coding the backend in node.js
and the frontend in jQuery.

I suggest you check out node.JS, it's easy to learn since you have a JS
background and it should handle well with what you're doing.

Also if you're intrested, I'm willing to help out for free, you can contact me
at: c1d@mypin.im.

------
harvestmoon
The response to this post surprises me a bit. Suicide prevention is a great
idea. But as described, it really isn't explained well enough to capture my
imagination.

There's very little description of what it would do beyond that it's an app
and it prevents suicide. And that it's a social network. That really isn't
enough to describe the idea.

I can see the possibility of a social network site for depressed people.

Dunno. It's a big goal, but very hard, and I think it's extremely important to
take into consideration the mentality of someone who is considering suicide.

Good luck.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
My initial thought: I could imagine a Facebook or Twitter app that analyses
posts of all your "friends"/"followed" to establish the mood of the post and
to highlight a trend that may look depressive giving a person a suggestion
that their acquaintance might be having problems. This may relate well to
suicide prevention.

Getting people to sign up for a social network because they're depressed seems
like an impossibility.

~~~
harvestmoon
I don't think it's entirely impossible.

On Reddit, they have a somewhat popular depression forum which is rather
depressing (a typical post is something like, "I managed to shower today" or
"does anyone else feel life is meaningless?") but people seem to benefit.

A service that helps people who feel down cheer up could be quite useful if
done right.

------
tenpoundhammer
Idea( you have ) -> Stakeholders -> Requirements -> Features -> Evaluate ->
Repeat

Considering the fact that you already received a grant, I would imagine you
have a few details of what you want to build, but you will find the real
tangles in the details.

I would greatly advise that you dive deeply into the various requirements and
untangle the details and drive clarity throughout the design, before you start
writing a lot of code.

Once you feel comfortable that you won't run into any big surprises and you
understand your general feature set you should prioritize these features, I
like to do the most risky and difficult features first, and then get started.
You will of course have a lot of ground work to lay, but that could be counted
as a feature.

After you have your first shippable set of code done, should take between 2
weeks and 2 months, shouldn't be perfect. Get it in front of someone that's
relevant. As it will be hard to find somebody suicidal that also wants to
review an app, probably somebody at a crisis center or a counselor that helps
people in this situation.

After a few demos you should find plenty of improvements and features you
never thought of, as well as defects. Now it's time to add these into your
priorities and start over.

Good Luck, I hope this goes well for you. Let me know if you would like any
further advisement, I would be glad to take emails and what not. I have been
developing software professionally for the past 3 years.

------
aestra
I can't believe some of the comments here. I admit I haven't read them all
yet, but come on...

Background, I've been suicidal many times in my life, having spent >3 weeks in
the psychiatric hospital. Been in the mental health system for YEARS. Been
around many many many suicidal people in that time.

This seems so naive. You have a lot of legal issues here, and also social and
ethical. You want to make sure you are cleared legally, you want to make sure
you are not violating HIPPA. You want to make DAMN sure you are doing the
right thing, and not encouraging the behavior you are trying to prevent. You
are describing this as some kinda "social network" and there are studies that
social networks can make you MORE lonely and depressed.

[http://now.msn.com/innovation-of-loneliness-video-says-
socia...](http://now.msn.com/innovation-of-loneliness-video-says-social-media-
can-make-you-feel-lonely)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margiewarrell/social-media-
lon...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margiewarrell/social-media-
lonely_b_4034744.html)

You want the help of a trained psychiatrist for god's sake.

You want to be damn sure you "suicide prevention" app doesn't get overwhelmed
by trolls and well meaning people giving bad advice, and if it does, you
aren't legally on the hook.

This is just way too big. This isn't some weekend project. This really really
is serious business. Don't do it. It's way too risky.

------
beloch
Step 1: Get help. Start figuring out what you don't know.

An app like this, especially if it were wildly successful in attracting users,
could do a lot of harm if the underlying idea isn't thought out well and based
on good ideas. You're 15. You love your idea and the competition judges did
too. Great! Are you or them experts on suicide prevention?

Fortunately, your goal isn't to make money or something similarly self-
serving. You're trying to save lives. That opens up tremendous resources to
you what would be denied to most trying to make their first app.
Psychologists, doctors, professors, etc. will all be happy to help you get the
idea right, free of charge, because it could save lives.

If you see a psychologist, ask them for their input and ask them for contacts.
Go to your local university and knock on doors. Find people who teach or do
research in the field and ask for their input. Make some phone-calls. Email
professors at other universities.

I know your instinct is to immediately try to advance your idea towards a
working app, but a great app based on a faulty idea is usually pretty useless
and this one could actually be dangerous. Get help immediately.

------
leoedin
liyanchang's suggestion is bang on. Even if you never touch on it again, if
you actually force yourself (by working on an interesting project) to touch on
the full stack of an app you will benefit from it for years.

So many of the little hobby projects I've worked on over the years (long since
abandoned) have provided a fantastic base for something else. A website I
managed when I was a teenager taught me all sorts of server admin skills that
still pay off 5 years later. When you're 15 you have absolutely oodles of free
time (it might not seem that way now, but it will when you're working full
time!). Make use of it!

~~~
rajivm
Seriously -- every project I had the opportunity to work on during my teen
years has formed the basis for so much of my later "real" career as a
developer. Each experience has provided me with invaluable skills.

------
rickyc091
Since you seem to have a good grasp of frontend, I would definitely checkout
[https://parse.com/products/data](https://parse.com/products/data) as a
backend solution.

------
noveltysystems
How about a native app for iOS & Android with a big red button that, if they
click it and confirm, puts the user immediately on the phone with a suicide
prevention counselor.

~~~
krrishd
That's close to wha the idea is, except it kind of prevents suicide at a more
early stage. But the idea can change, that sounds interesting as well...

------
vdaniuk
Congratulations! This is an absolutely great opportunity for you to learn
useful skills, make the world better and significantly improve your resume.

I think you should spend a grant on your education and skills related to the
app. This is a sustainable approach given that the grant is not really large
and you are in the exploratory phase of your project.

Do everything yourself while consulting with the community non-stop, lots of
people will be eager to help you.

Btw, I consult startups on marketing and I think your story is straight
techcrunch/mashable/thenextweb material, ready to inspire other young people
to learn programming. If you need any help spreading your mission, this app or
teen2geek, for the greater good, just drop me an note, I'll be eager to help
you pro bono. My e-mail is in the profile.

------
naunga
As a developer who has struggled with depression, I really dig this.

I've got a lot of years doing backend work, and I'd be more than happy to help
pro bono.

I personally would not get too hung up on the stack you use. Find something
that will get you up and writing tests and building pages as quickly as
possible.

Discussions about various stacks usually have to do with scaling and scaling
usually is a problem after the prototype stage (which is the goal I'm
guessing).

Up and coding.

I also agree that you should do the bulk of the work yourself. The knowledge
you gain will be priceless, and in today's software development world, it is
helpful for front-end guys to know what the backend guys do and vice-versa.

Certainly lean on people here for help and advice, but I wouldn't have someone
do all the backend work for you.

Good luck to you!

------
shittyanalogy
My biggest piece of advice: Don't consider the money an investment in you App.
Consider it a form of encouragement to keep you thinking and working in
general.

Whoever gave you this money isn't expecting you to build a suicide prevention
app directly. They are saying that they like your idea, they like you, and
they want you to keep at it. It's a grant, not a loan so don't worry about
treating it as a loan.

Use it to get some training you might want, use it to set up a business and
learn about business, use it to buy a piece of hardware you might otherwise
not be able to afford. Use it to further your chances of eventually being able
to make a difference, don't put pressure on yourself to make the absolute most
of it.

Lastly, put it on your resume.

------
DavidWanjiru
I'm probably wrong about this, and I know very little psychology, but I am
under the impression that suicidal people don't admit to having a problem.
Also, they don't hope to find help, either coz they think or know it's out of
reach, or don't know help is available. If this was not so, I would imagine
they'd seek this help rather than take their lives, which is a sign of someone
giving up hope. Now, installing an app for suicide prevention looks to me like
an act by someone who HASN'T given up hope. And if you haven't given up hope,
you are already walking away from the brink. And if you're already walking
away from the brink, maybe you're not suicidal? My feeling here is that an app
for reaching out or talking someone out of taking their life may not be the
best approach to reaching such a person to make them pull back. Of course the
journey to suicide is long and complex, and there must be many points at which
an intervention is useful and where your app will play a part, but I just feel
like there might be a disconnect between the people who should use your app
and those who _would_ use your app. Be that as it may, like I said, I'm not a
psychologist, and most likely my assumptions are wrong. I imagine the
literature on suicide being mentioned talks about this in detail and from a
professional point of view. All the same, I wish you all the best in your
project and hope it succeeds.

------
baby
Try to do it yourself. Don't be afraid of "failure" because there is none
here, you are not getting paid to realize something, people saw someone
ambitious and willing to try so they "gave" you the money.

Now whatever happens next, it will only be valuable. You will only learn
things from that point, outsourcing is not an option when you're willing to
learn. Because this is an opportunity to learn, it is not an opportunity to
succeed.

------
car
I'm not sure what exactly your idea is, but may I suggest you partner with
experts in the field?

I'd recommend you ping Prof. Joshi at Stanford, who was involved with a
suicide prevention program in Palo Alto. And if only to run your idea by him
and solicit some feedback.

This is a video of him talking about suicide risk factors in teens:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lIqp6odvp0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lIqp6odvp0)

Good luck!

------
smoyer
The steps that I'd take in your position:

1) Determine how much back-end I really need (or whether I need one at all).
I'm going to assume your grant proposal contains use-cases (or user stories)
that describe the interaction with the back-end.

2) Decide what framework(s) your front-end will be using and make a list of
the back-ends that you believe would work with the front-end.

3) Define the interface between the front-end and back-end ... an ICD or API
document will help you with both sides of the connection.

4) Find a mentor who can get you started with your chosen back-end technology
as well as help you out when you get stuck.

I'd use this as a means to learn at least a little about back-end
architecture. On the other hand, you could ignore the typical back-end
development and go with something you know - e.g. CouchDB uses a RESTful API
to store JSON documents, provides facilities for making views, lists (an HTML
transformation of a view) and shows (an HTML transformation of a JSON
document.

4) Find a mentor who can get you started on the chosen back-end, and help when
you get stuck.

------
endophage
Lots of people have given you very specific advice about what frameworks to
use, how to approach the problem, etc...

Take it all with a grain of salt. What I'd suggest to get started is create a
public github project for it, put together some wireframes and sequence
diagrams (publish them in the github project) so that people can see what it's
meant to look like and how it's mean to work. Then just start coding.

Post the github project here on HN and ask for contributors. Keep a curated
list of features, tasks and bugs in the github project and let people pick
them up and help you build it.

Rule #1 though, don't let people get you down. Everyone has an opinion and we
software people can be pretty harsh, especially when, frankly, we're just
arguing our opinion rather than fact.

Rule #2, done is better than perfect. What's your Minimum Viable Product?
Build that, maintain tunnel vision on completing that, then worry about
everything else it could do.

------
palidanx
A little tangential, but listening to this might help out with perspective:

[http://themoth.org/posts/stories/perfect-
moments](http://themoth.org/posts/stories/perfect-moments)

And maybe reach out to other suicide prevention non profits?

------
martylauders
On the development side: I'd go for firebase, frontender myself and the docs
are pretty easy to follow. Since you know angular, you can use angularfire to
easily get you started. If you have experience with yeoman you can try out
this generator ([https://github.com/dsimard/generator-angular-
phonegap](https://github.com/dsimard/generator-angular-phonegap)) which gives
you an emulator to phonegap. Didn't try it myself, but seems interesting.

On the projectside: Cool that you would take your time and skills to work on a
project like that. I had the sad experience of losing someone close through
suicide, so... yeah. Thanks.

------
diminoten
What is a "front-end developer"?

I can do the literal translation, and I can surmise that it means a person who
builds and designs UIs, but I always thought that was a designer, not a
developer.

Javascript is the only thing on what you've just listed that's Turing
complete, so look into Node.js, in addition to all the other Buzz Words you
see in the rest of the comments.

I also think you should come at this with a dark sense of humor. You're not
going to save many lives if you don't get attention, and you're not going to
get anyone's attention if it's Just Another Web App. Tasteful gallows humor is
a good way to grab the audience you're looking for.

~~~
ddedden
A front end developer is someone that builds the interface. Designers are
becoming programmers more and more nowadays, but it used to be that the
designer drew out an interface and the developer built it.

Here's a good article about it, as well:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_and_back_ends](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_and_back_ends)

~~~
diminoten
I'm not sure this is a good thing for code quality and thus app quality.

------
d_j_s
You may find [https://www.firebase.com/](https://www.firebase.com/) or
[http://www.meteor.com/](http://www.meteor.com/) allow you to do it all on the
frontend

~~~
krrishd
I was thinking about meteor, I'm just not sure how complex it would be to
implement on a mobile app.

~~~
jggonz
I've been using Meteor for a couple of years now, and although it does a lot
of magic, I recommend using it only for very simple projects.

For this application, meteor may be suitable, but keep in mind that you'll
need to build a lot of your supporting infrastructure until Meteor 1.0 comes
out.

Reasons not to use Meteor:

It is currently very difficult to accurately profile memory issues.

Simple html mixups can take half an hour to debug due to the fact that they'll
only show up in production, and in minimized/uglified form.

MongoDB costs 'money' to scale properly (sharding across multiple machines
with lots of memory (if your database grows).

Edit: This is not a simple project, so maybe meteor is asking for trouble
since it's not very mature yet.

------
kneisley
I have to +1 the parse.com suggestion. Their API has an Angular wrapper if you
really know it well. Or, if you haven't hit the 'Angular Wall' (meaning you
haven't built something of real-world complexity with it), you can use their
JS SDK, which is a backbone fork.

I suggest you open source all of it, and keep HN up to date on progress. List
out what the product should do, and how you want to design your models. You'll
get some solid feedback.

Web iterates fast, so I'd use web rather than jumping right into native.
You'll be able to show your code to coders, and show your product to social
workers and those who support at-risk people.

~~~
krrishd
Would you say the same about Firebase?

~~~
kneisley
I suggested Parse because I'm personally using it right now, so I know it
well. That's obviously a bias, so take it as such. Firebase looks very
similar. If you are going to lean on the greater community, Parse seems
slightly better, because of the fact its a fork of Backbone-more people should
understand pretty easily what's up with models.

Also, Parse is owned by Facebook and has pretty solid, simple login and
integration with social sites.

------
ma2rten
You'd have to be more specific about how the app is supposed to work. For
instance maybe it can be accomplished with the Facebook javascript api,
implementing it on top of Facebook. Maybe not.

Anyway, I wish you good luck.

~~~
krrishd
Its kind of a social network structure, bu simpler than things like FB,
twitter, etc. it doesn't rely on any API, and would be really easy for anyone
who knows what they're doing on the backend.

------
muxxa
My favorite anti-suicide advice is 'Never commit suicide when hungover'. It
sounds subversive but I think it gets the message across by first not
discounting that the other person may have valid and important problems, and
then emphasizing that all states of mind are subject to improvement.

You could (carefully) curate a list of this sort of advice from people who
have actually felt suicidal at one point or another and pop up a random
message on demand in the app. Carefully, as most cheerful advice does not
sound so good when you are depressed.

~~~
lazerwalker
It sounds like the OP already knows _what_ he wants to build, he is more
looking for advice on the _how_.

------
ojr
You should use [http://ionicframework.com](http://ionicframework.com) when it
is ready, for storage use ngStorage
[https://github.com/gsklee/ngStorage](https://github.com/gsklee/ngStorage),
and a guide for starting with angular and phonegap/cordova is here
[http://devgirl.org/2013/06/10/quick-start-guide-phonegap-
and...](http://devgirl.org/2013/06/10/quick-start-guide-phonegap-and-
angularjs/)

------
oliv9286
hi Krish, please let me know if I can contribute in any way! I'm probably not
as experienced as most people here in terms of technical skills, but speaking
from personal experience, a very good friend of mine nearly took his own life
few months back. It was a painful experience, I myself had a few days of major
depression during the incident, so I was able to understand how hard it is for
people who suffer from long-term depression (and even then I'm sure my
struggles weren't nearly as difficult as what my friend was going through at
that time). I don't hope to see anyone else losing their own life, or losing
the ones they love to depression/suicide again. Imo, suicide is a pretty
sensitive topic. Instead of rushing to the technical details and how to build
the app, I think it's much more important to carefully study and really
understand the people who have had suicide thoughts, what are their struggles,
what caused the thought, and how to help them resolve that thought. And it's
important to analyze what are the potential issues/risks of the app's design
so that it doesn't end up unintentionally bringing more harm than help. And
last but not least, I'm more familiar with the back-end, but willing to do
(and learn!) more front-end as well. I hope your project can succeed, good
luck!

------
xenophanes
What I would recommend next is recognizing that suicide is a complicated and
controversial issue, and there are differing attitudes and approaches towards
it. Your app, like it or not, will be opinionated. Have informed opinions. For
example, read this:

[http://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Freedom-Ethics-Politics-
Suicide/...](http://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Freedom-Ethics-Politics-
Suicide/dp/0815607555)

If you disagree, fine, but have an informed opinion.

------
adamqureshi
Dude. make a mobile web app. Hook up with a clinical psychologist. Also focus
on a target age / market. Get some data going. Hit me up i can see what to do
about a clinical psychologist hook up in NYC. There are several scales
psychologist use to narrow down a specific condition and you can incorporate
those scales into the app via logic tree / branching based on the input a user
submits to the Q&A. you can hit me on twitter @adamqureshi

------
vikp
This is awesome. I think the main thing I did when I was 15 was sleep....

I'm actually working on an application (www.happsee.com) for tracking
happiness. Somewhat similar, but not exactly. It's already had some huge
benefits for me as far as understanding my own emotions.

If you want to chat more about making an app (mine is for android), machine
learning (predicting stuff from other stuff), or building a backend, let me
know. Email is in my profile.

------
VMG
Do research, read the literature.

------
thom
A company local to me worked[1] on a similar idea[2] for Mind, a mental health
charity in the UK. Might be some inspiration there. As for the technical side,
you'll only learn by doing, and other posters have provided some fine ideas.

[1] [http://www.yoomee.com/elefriends](http://www.yoomee.com/elefriends)

[2] [http://elefriends.org.uk/](http://elefriends.org.uk/)

------
prateekj
I would suggest you to learn how to build the entire thing yourself. This is a
great opportunity to get your hands dirty and understand the nitty-gritty of
web development. Very useful in the long run!

Having said that, I am not sure about the time constraints you are working
with. If the timeline is tight and you have never done this before, it's
better to outsource it as opposed to building a sub-standard app yourself.

------
mdisraeli
Another offer of support - drop me a line if you want a hand with not just
technical security, but Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) aspects to such
a project.

I suspect a project like this has more complex Governance, Risk and Compliance
issues than most. Where possible, work with an existing charity working in
this area, as they should already have practices in place to manage this.

------
DanBC
Good Luck OP. It's fantastic to see that you're getting many offers of help. I
really look forward to seeing what is created.

Some people are suggesting research. I'd be interested in suitable papers and
organisations.

One good place is the University of Oxford Centre for Suicide Research:

[http://cebmh.warne.ox.ac.uk/csr/](http://cebmh.warne.ox.ac.uk/csr/)

------
acoleman616
This is great. First off, congrats.

As others have mentioned, due to the sensitive nature of a project along these
lines, I would _strongly_ recommend finding a mentor in the psychology realm.
You'll want to make sure that you carefully consider some of the functionality
aspects of the app to make sure things won't be unnecessarily/accidentally
harmful.

------
dutchblacksmith
Hello, I would try to write the entire app myself. You will learn so much from
it. That will benifit you forever. If you get stuck, just put another ask at
hacker news. If you just help one person who is depressed, its worth ten times
the effort.I have been there. Thanks for taking part in the competition and
good luck to you.

------
cliftonk
You should try using a backend-as-a-service if you aren't comfortable with
databases/scaling/etc and would like to get the app out. Parse (parse.com)
would probably work great for you. It wouldn't be a bad idea to get them to
sponsor your application / company (assuming you create a non-profit).

Best of luck.

------
fleitz
I think you should reach out to those who are experts in the field and find
out what they think would work, then build something that does that.

As an example my partner volunteers with a suicide prevention hotline that
also has a chat client, I'm sure they'd love something mobile that works with
their chat system, etc.

------
gremlinsinc
Don't know what your idea is.. but a thought or plugin is what about an
anonymous place for people to vent or answer the question.. Why I wish I were
dead: I have 6 toes on my left foot. others can respond anonymously..about
that... some sort of peer group online/ facilitated instant support group.

~~~
aestra
I'm sorry, but this will be overrun by trolls and give out unhelpful/bad
advice. Plus, there are already forums for this.

National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255 There's _trained_ people
to give support on these very issues. There's other numbers you can call as
well. Check them out.

------
gprasanth
Build it. There are a lot of tutorials out there to quickly build stuff in any
technology you choose. Reaching out through this question - "What do I do?" Is
what you should advice suicidal people to do. There is always help if you ask
for it.

------
s_dev
You could use this app for inspiration or research:
[http://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/item/34863-tech-
sta...](http://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/item/34863-tech-start-up-of-
the-week/)

------
codezero
Get in touch with someone from here:
[http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/](http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/)

They do a lot of work in this area and will have the best advice on what
things you can do to help.

------
genwin
You'll go far, kid! Glad you found someone here who can help you with the
back-end.

------
gtt
I think a more detailed description of things app ought to do would be very
helpful.

------
docforeman
I happen to know the President of the American Association of Suicidology.
Email me and I'll put you in touch. I also mod a Twitter chat on Suicide
Prevention and Social Media. Would love to support you.

~~~
krrishd
Hi,

I'm still sorting out how exactly I'm going to structure this and implement
it, so as soon as I figure that out, I'll shoot you an email. Thanks :)

------
Freeboots
Im not sure if it would be helpful for your exact vision, but there are
several open source social network platforms like www.elgg.org which could
give you a jumpstart on the backend to get underway.

------
jason_slack
Way to go! Can I send you any books via Amazon to help you out?

------
matthewcford
Figure out who are the users, research what people are already doing in this
space (Samaritans) and test your ideas before building anything with paper
prototypes.

------
f7t7ft7
Why not learn Node.js? You learned almost everything else Javascript. There's
got to be some decent ORM for it. How much time do you have to do this?

------
L3monPi3
I think you should learn how to use a version control system in an efficient
way, in github you have days with >20 commits of css in a row...

------
colig
This is a major undertaking. IMO, you will most likely end up reaching the
lower-hanging fruit of depression rather than suicide. Good luck.

------
docforeman
I happen to know the President of the American Association of Suicidology.
Email me and I'll put you in touch. Acf@docforeman.com

------
captainbenises
Ignore the crazy motherfuckers in this thread, jesus. Like I said on reddit,
use phonegap, angular and maybe a simple ruby on rails backend if you need
something on the server. That'll be the easiest way to build the app, and
you'll develop great marketable skills.

------
buremba
You're just started, do it yourself.

------
snoopybbt
Develop a suicide prevention app.

