When Anthony Zarzana’s fraternity brother Jack Helmer suggested he needed help he didn’t think twice about it. Still, he wasn’t sure he would be the best tester for the new mental health app his friend had created.
“I didn’t take mental health very seriously at that time,” said Zarzana. “When he was explaining it to me, I was like, okay, how was this app going to help us?”
Zarzana didn’t think he needed the UBYou app because he had plenty of experience managing pressure playing competitive baseball in high school and then at FGCU. Zarzana added he learned from his parents to essentially put his feelings to the side and push through.
But the software engineering major agreed to try the app prototype which provided positive affirmations, meditations and linked students to campus services.
“I found myself using it every morning, and then every night, and I would actually use it to reflect off of my day,” said Zarzana.
Hellmer created the app after experiencing his own mental health battle for the first time. He was overwhelmed by two deaths — a young, close relative, and a pet — and growing pressures at work and school.
“This combination in a 30-day period brought this new level of anxiety, stress, grief that I've never experienced before. I had tension in my chest, a racing mind,” said Hellmer
Counseling and different coping therapies helped Hellmer back on track but he wondered how his friends dealt with stress and big life changes.
“When they told me that they just lived with what they were dealing with, or that they were using a substance of some sort, to mask what they were feeling basically. You know, ‘Oh, I drink, I smoke, whatever,’” Hellmer said. “I was like, alright, there's got to be a way for them to try out these natural things.”
So Hellmer shared techniques that worked for him from meditations to exercises to help reduce their anxiety.
“A lot of them were saying, ‘Wow, this really helped me,’” said Hellmer, and so, the idea for the app was born.
Hellmer also got help creating UBYou from professors at FGCU’s Daveler and Kauanui School of Entrepreneurship.
The app — which is being adopted campus wide — is designed to ask students how they’re feeling and doing. Based on their responses, it connects them to campus resources. So, if a student complains about feeling uncomfortable with their body and appearance the app could connect the student to the university’s counseling center, as well as a campus wellness coach and a fitness trainer.
“It’s giving those tailored solutions to students that show that they're struggling with this,” said Hellmer.
Students can also share the information collected by the app with campus counselors to improve therapy. FGCU business professor Colleen Rob also helped Hellmer with the app.
“Hopefully, it'll make a world of difference. I think that it'll make this campus more efficient, because the resources will be utilized a lot better. I think the students will feel less alone and students can feel kind of connected and feel like it's okay to actively work on their mental health every day,” said Robb.
Hellmer believes UBYou will help FGCU students better cope with pressures that are unique to students today.
“It's like a competition in a sense of what other people are doing, how they portray themselves online, and how you see it. But also, I think, with the pandemic, it hurt a lot of social cues and social issues and experiences for people. And that there's this pressure to follow a path,” said Hellmer.
He believes these issues can lead to increased stress and anxiety and a general lack of being happy. He hopes his app can help students cope in some small way.
For Zarzana, UBYou turned out to be a surprise. it helped him realize that suppressing his feelings wasn’t making them disappear.
“You know, it kind of just helped me break down those feelings and get to the core understanding of why I feel a certain way. Whether that was anxiety, stress about a certain test or stress about something I had to go do that day.”
Zarzana thinks the app will be a hit.
“Personally, that breathing function helped me to relax,” Zarzana said. “And then I get back into a mental state of ‘Okay, I'm ready to go take this test and do the best I can'.”
And Hellmer hopes it will help students beyond his campus. He plans to launch the app this September across FGCU and then offer it to other schools in the Spring.
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