We’ve all had bad days. We’ve maybe had a shitty week, too.
Usually, shitty days end and a new day begins and it’s better than the day
before. A shitty week is often followed by a week that’s not quite as bad. For
people with depression, however, it can feel like the “bad days” will never
end, like everything is gray, always, and there seems no hope for better times.
It can be incredibly hard to find another perspective to this grayness, or darkness
that covers everything.
That is why Koko is such a revolutionary idea.
The app was first developed and tested in an MIT Lab by Robert
Morris and his team. The idea when Morris studied coding and reached out to a
community of programmers for help when he found himself stuck. The collective
intelligence found in this forum intrigued him. He creatively took an idea from
a field focused on computers to the field of psychology, and developed his PhD
project called Panoply.
It seems that his motivation for the project was more intrinsic than extrinsic:
Morris wanted to help people find solutions, make their lives easier through his
innovation, rather than to "meet some goal external to the work itself, such as attaining an expected reward, winning a competition, or meeting some requirement" (Collins and Amabile, 1999). While the original project was explicitly focused on people with depression,
Koko branches out much further to people with every day stressors—to anyone who
feels they need a little extra support in their lives.
Koko offers support for and from people all over the world. Someone
struggling with—say—negative thoughts about themselves regarding body image can
post a short description of how they are feeling and what the worst outcome of
the situation or thought would be. The community of members around the globe
then help to “rethink” the negative thoughts and give perspective to the
situation. An article in on Time.com describes that “Panoply [now Koko] works
by teaching users a therapeutic tool called cognitive reappraisal, which tries
to get people to look at a problematic situation from different perspectives”.
To give an example:
Someone is having a really hard time with body image. They
might write something like
“I hate my body and
am ugly no matter how hard I try to look better
I fail, and no one else thinks that I am
beautiful anyway”
And, as a worst case scenario
“No one will ever
tell me that I’m beautiful or love me.”
The community might rethink these negative thoughts and
answer something like this
“You are beautiful
even though it can be hard to feel like no one thinks that you are. Maybe you
can find one aspect that you do like yourself and remind yourself of this
feature every day? You are beautiful!”
Koko is a two-way street. While it does not offer clinical
support for individuals suffering from depression, it does create a system of
support and can be incredibly powerful for people who feel like they need
someone to listen and to give another perspective. Koko is free of cost, and
thus can function as an additional tool for individuals who struggle with costs
for mental health counseling and therapy.
On the other end, Koko offers a boost of confidence to those
who respond and rethink. Just a little comment can mean a lot.
If you are ever struggling, remember that there is a
platform out there to help you out.
Collins, M. A., & Amabile, T. M. (1999). Motivation and Creativity. In Robert J Sternberg (Ed.) Handbook of Creativity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
This is something I have never heard but I wish I did! This is certainly something that can help the stigma of mental illness as well. The idea behind this was certainly more intrinsic than extrinsic, I just wonder about how it can be used to help with more than just depression. I mean, it could be used as a way to offer support with other cases of mental illness, such as recovering addicts or people battling eating disorders?
ReplyDeleteI think that would be really interesting. A of right now, the platform is very open to any sort of message, which I think can be both helpful (because it targets a wider range of people) but possibly also intimidating.
DeleteI have heard of self-help / mental illness apps like this! I think it's an interesting concept to use technology, now that's inundating our lives, to use it to help psychologically. But I also think that this idea comes with hesitation-- what if someone posts a potentially harmful comment... is there a mechanism built in that would maybe direct the person to get professional help?
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