The project of three students from the Escola Secundária de Vila Real de Santo António took them to Barcelona, where they participate in the Campus Challenge 2023, organized by the La Caixa Foundation. “Anxiety or nervousness, do you need to vent but are embarrassed to face a specialist face to face?”
Talk2Me is an application to install on mobile phones and is aimed at people who usually have mental health problems, or who have permanent anxiety, or who occasionally just want to get rid of everyday problems.
Catarina Nunes is one of the three students who designed this app. Together with her classmates Beatriz and Vitória, who are in the 11th year of their Science and Technology degree, she thought it would be interesting if anyone who uses the application can speak through a chat with a psychologist. “This conversation would take place anonymously,” explains the student.
Students from the Algarve consider that most of the time people do not go to a psychologist out of shame, because they come face to face with a stranger to vent their problems.
If their project goes ahead, they think that the application may have psychologists from the National Health Service or even final year students of the Clinical Psychology career on the other side.
Of the 1,500 projects that were submitted to the competition, 100 approved, of which 97 are Spanish and three are Portuguese, two from private schools in Parede and Almada, and only this one from a public school.
Until next Saturday, the hundreds of young people who passed this stage of the contest are in Barcelona to participate in various activities. Of these 100 projects, only fifteen will be selected and will be rewarded with a last trip to New York.
“Being here and having all the knowledge that we have been acquiring, seeing our application grow, is already an incredible reward”, guarantees Catarina.
Source: TSF
