About The Project
Bridging the Gap from Awareness to Access with MindWell
MindWell is a conceptual, holistic mental health resource that supports students and young adults through the entire help-seeking journey, from recognizing a need to scheduling a first appointment.
Client
Conceptual Project
Service
UX Research & Design
Date
March 2026
My Role
As part of a five-person research team, I contributed across the full project. My primary responsibilities were research coordination, project management, research session moderation and observation, and data analysis and synthesis. I also contributed to secondary research, journey mapping, archetype development, and the design concept.
Project Overview
About The Project
MindWell was a self-directed concept developed for a Behavioral Science & UX course at DePaul University. We explored why mental health services remain underused by students and young adults even when resources technically exist, and designed a connected set of tools to address the barriers that surfaced.
The Challenge
Mental health is an ongoing wicked problem, and the U.S. is no different. Despite growing availability of resources and services, students and young professionals often don't access them when needed. Accessing care is a behavioral challenge shaped by cognitive, emotional, and systemic factors — not availability alone — and the barriers are both internal (anxiety, shame, low self-efficacy, intent–action gaps) and external (cost, insurance complexity, provider discovery, cultural mismatch).
The Questions
How can access to mental health services be increased for students and young professionals?
What barriers prevent students and young professionals from accessing mental health services?
Our Hypotheses
Information overload as a barrier — the more context an individual receives about the system, the less likely they are to seek help.
Perceived public stigma as a barrier — fear of judgment from peers, family, and institutions blocks help-seeking even when a need is recognized.
Healthcare system complexity as a barrier — insurance, provider discovery, cost, and scheduling create friction that prevents care even among the emotionally ready.
The Timeline: 3 Months
Planning — 2 weeks
Recruitment — 2 weeks
Research — 2 weeks
Analysis — 2 weeks
Prototyping and design — 2 weeks
Final report — 2 weeks
Research & Methodology
Our research had three parts:
Secondary research — literature reviews across five areas of inquiry, one per researcher: trust and cultural stigma, cross-cultural stigma variation, mental health literacy, intent–action gap and emotional capacity, and low perceived need and dropout.
Primary research — 10 semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted via Zoom, ~45 minutes each, across five topic areas and 10 core questions with probes. Two participant classifications: help-seekers and non-help-seekers.
Synthesis and design — tagging in Atlas.ti, thematic analysis, empathy mapping, and journey mapping in FigJam, followed by a design concept and prototype.
Recruitment
We recruited through the DePaul University CDM Participant Pool and our professional networks using a Google Forms screener that captured demographics, help-seeking history, and student or working-professional status. 22 respondents were screened. We completed 9 sessions, spanning ages 18–35+ and White/European, Black/African American, Asian, Hispanic/Latine, and mixed backgrounds.
Key Highlights
Our Findings
Five themes emerged from the interviews:
The Crisis Threshold — most participants normalized their struggles until a breaking point forced action; recognizing a need and acting on it were separated by months or years.
Peer Influence as Catalyst and Permission — peers shaped both the timing and comfort level of the decision, often replacing formal channels with personal referrals.
The Navigation Phase — even after deciding to seek help, participants faced fragmented information, insurance friction, and scheduling barriers.
Competing Norms Across Social Contexts — expectations about mental health shifted between peers, family, workplace, and cultural community.
Trust Requires Authentic Connection — credentials alone weren't enough; a poor first match could stop the process entirely.
Testing our hypotheses against the data:
H1 (Information Overload) — Not supported. The barrier was the opposite: too little useful information, scattered across too many places. We reframed this as information inaccessibility.
H2 (Perceived Stigma) — Partially supported. Stigma was context-dependent, showing up in families, workplaces, and cultural communities rather than universally.
H3 (Healthcare System Complexity) — Strongly supported. This was the most consistent barrier after the decision to seek help.
The Behavioral Archetype
We synthesized the interviews into a single archetype: The High-Functioning Holdout — young adults ages 20–35, high-functioning on the outside, struggling quietly, who delay help-seeking until a catalyst makes the need undeniable. Their decisions are shaped by high self-efficacy ("as long as I'm functioning, I'm fine"), a rising self-image bar ("my concerns aren't that bad"), and uncertainty about whether they'll find someone they trust.
Our Recommendations
The problem with mental health access isn't one barrier — it's a chain of them. Our design strategy proposed a connected ecosystem, MindWell, that intervenes at each stage of the journey:
Awareness — an educational workshop and marketing campaign to make signs of distress recognizable before a crisis.
Internal deliberation — a self-assessment tool that surfaces coping depletion rather than diagnosing.
Research — a provider directory with filters for specialty, insurance, and identity fit (BIPOC-affirming, LGBTQ+-affirming, bilingual, and more), addressing the fragmented lists participants described.
Scheduling — direct scheduling links, transparent costs shown up front, and async intake outside business hours to reduce friction at the moment of highest resolve.
The Next Step
As a concept, MindWell's next steps are: partnering with a licensed therapist or social worker to clinically review the self-assessment and workshop content, piloting the 90-minute workshop with a small group, usability-testing the provider directory with real users, and — if piloted through a partner organization — tracking aggregate post-workshop resource access to see whether the awareness intervention actually moves people into the next stages.
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