Recently my team completely changed what our year long project is, and I’m pretty excited about the direction we’ve chosen to go in. We are working on creating a set of stations that would give someone who has never experienced depression a better idea of what it feels like for those who have dealt with it, through the use of VR and AR technology.
I’ve struggled with depression since I was about 12 years old and I had a hell of a time trying to explain what was wrong to my parents, specifically my dad had never experienced anything of the sort before. He thought I was being lazy, he couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t just get up and do the 10 second chore, and for a long time neither could I. This problem space hits very close to home for me, but that just makes me want to work harder.
I shared some of my ideas with my roommate, and later had some of her friends (that I hardly knew) come up to me and commend me for taking on a problem space that seems to go unnoticed. One woman spent over an hour talking to me about her families struggles to understand anxiety and depression, and the lack of empathy her sister received when she was going through one of the darkest moments of her life. I can see the immense need for a tool like this, whatever form it ends up taking, and I’d like to see this project through to the end, even if my group changes direction again.
