With University counseling centers often overwhelmed and college students unable to afford many other forms of professional psychiatric services, finding mental support can be extremely difficult or flat-out impossible. 

A student-founded app called Project Unmasked seeks to change that.

In winter 2o2o, students at Dartmouth University launched Project Unmarked: an app where students have the ability to give and receive anonymous mental health support to other peers. The project has since expanded to 46 college campuses throughout the country including the University.

Lily Schor and Danny Konishi, seniors in LAS and co-presidents of the University chapter of Project Unmasked, launched the local version of the app last year. Unmasked UIUC consists primarily of a campus-specific discussion board where students can post nameless messages and receive responses from their peers.    

“On the app, there are also links to all of the resources for mental health on campus, which is also campus-specific,” Schor said. “The app is moderated by a team of students so that all the messages get a response. There are certain trigger warnings that can be put onto the app so that it stays user-friendly.”

For Schor, her passion for launching the app stems from her career goals of becoming a therapist as well as her own observations of mental health in college. 

“In college, there’s a lot of stress, and there’s a lot of new environments that people find themselves in with a lot of pressures around them,” Schor said. “A lot of times, people don’t feel like they have the place to speak their voice and say how they’re actually feeling.”

College campuses are often hotspots for mental health issues. According to a 2021 Mayo Clinic study, up to 44% of college students reported experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety within the past year

“(Many) college students struggle with mental health each year, so I think it’s really prevalent and it’s important to give students as many resources as possible to try to help,” Konishi said. 

But getting help is not easy. Large numbers of college students struggling with mental health also are reluctant to reach out. According to the 2021 Mayo Clinic study, 75% of college students who struggled with mental health did not seek professional help.

Lingering stigmas about mental health make getting help more difficult. Schor said that one inspiration for Unmasked was such stigmas.

“Having a moderated, anonymous place where there’s no shame or judgment will make people feel that mental health isn’t like a scary thing or it’s not an unapproachable or unspeakable topic,” Schor said. “It’s something that everyone’s going through. It’s important for students to have something available to them 24/7 that they can use to say whatever they feel like, whenever they feel like it.”

Konishi said that the app’s personal experience will encourage those reluctant to seek help to take the first steps towards bettering their mental health. 

“There’s a lot of different reasons people aren’t able to get any mental health resources, so the app really makes sure people know they’re not alone,” Konishi said.

Konishi explained how the app’s features make the user experience feel more human.

“There’s always going to be a response to the users on the app and there will never not be a response, and the response is not automated, it’s a real person,” Schor said. “So I think it makes it really personal.”

Regarding the present state and future of the app, Unmasked is undergoing national-level changes. While the app has around one hundred users at the University, students will soon be able to interact with many others. 

Currently, if a University student posts a message on the app, only other students at the University can see it. After the upcoming update, college students will be able to send their messages out and receive responses from others on different campuses all across the country.     

Schor and Konishi said they are actively promoting the app on social media and they are also looking to work with other mental health-oriented RSOs and Greek life. They want to raise awareness for their app and bolster the number of people that are aware of its, and their own potential.

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