robertrmorris

Frankly, I agree with pretty much all of this. We hear similar things from our users. This is why we try to provide a suite of options, including things like peer support and other interventions they can engage with immediately — as compliments to lifelines. We’re still learning about what works best, but the status quo is abysmal. Here’s an example: I can go on Google and search for “flight to Miami” and I’ll be led through an incredible UX that’s designed to get me to a purchase as quickly as possible. But if I search for “depression”, I get a one-box that provides a list of clinical definitions of depression, bipolar, and its various subtypes — better suited for a diagnostic manual than for anyone who might actually be struggling. Other platforms provide tips on how to take a deep breath, reach out to friends, or walk around the block (the digital equivalent to a health brochure you might find in a waiting room). The shortcomings of these approaches have been studied before, and yet they still persist. Why don’t we measure and track these things with the same rigor we do for all online experiences?

We’re a non-profit and our service will always be available for free. There is no paywall. We support ourselves through donations. This should be more clear on our landing page, thanks for noting this.

Yea this is an interesting problem. The whole question of whether, when, or how to intercept someone who might be in trouble is really challenging and we’ve thought about this for many years (and had some missteps along the way and learned a lot on what works and what doesn’t).

Our system gently recommends our service to users right when they search and so the cost of a false positive is low (they can just ignore it or it might just seem like an unrelated PSA). Search is also great because we can vary the intensity of the keywords. For one of our partners, we’re now surfacing resources (in subtle ways) for lower risk searches like “depression.” It is super important to us to think about how we might help people upstream, before they reach a state of crisis.

For users flagged, we work well as a layer on top of CTL as our ux works for people across the entire spectrum of severity.

Great questions! Our library runs completely on the server side, caching a list of regexes which are used to match against. So no data is ever sent to our API.

As for publishing the lists, it's definitely something we're thinking of. for now, it's easy to get them if you sign up with us. we don't charge for use

"oops" new landing page. I updated the links, but you can also find them on our main page: "www.kokocares.org". Note also that for the kit, we have our own licensing agreement that's available if you sign up, but is not on this webpage.