u/Due-Pear5450

hi all,

working on a college project to build a mental health and emotional support tool , wanted to build something for an audience i think is constantly overlooked: people exiting the correctional system who are exhausted by sterile the sterile support sytstems in place rn.

rn there r A LOT of mental health apps are for people in comfortable offices who are "a little stressed" not for real anxiety, and survival stress of people re-figuring out life.

1. choosing a way to vent: instead of rigid, annoying multiple-choice diagnostic tests right out of the gate we were thinking of an option to choose how you want to express yourself—you can just type out whatever is on your mind in an open text box, do a quick multiple-choice check-in if you prefer that, or skip it entirely. and based on that the tool would would find what kind of specific support or specialist u may need. is this actually useful or is there smth youd change ab this?
2. Tiered human support: the app/tool could connect users with an initial guide/counselor over video just to talk through immediate stress. obv If they aren't a good fit, or you need deeper, specialized clinical therapy, they can instantly introduce user to professional psychologist. Would this system be trustworthy and worthy of approach?
3. logistical checklist: a milestone-like checklist for the concrete, stressful stuff :getting your ID, sorting out transit, budgeting, and finding housing, having all ur important documents in place for employment and such. r there other things we could help with or the app could compact resources into that u would actually want quick access to?

im prepared to be completely out of touch and naive about this, so reddit was the perfect choice as I wanted to learn directly from people who actually know what re-entry is. pls feel free to share anything or point out my misunderstandings, maybe my ideas r sterile too; i just want to be steered in the right direction to help out. thank you guys <3