DEV Community

Cover image for Request for Comments: Quirk, an Open Source Cognitive Behavioral Therapy App

Request for Comments: Quirk, an Open Source Cognitive Behavioral Therapy App

Evan on December 10, 2018

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor nor medical researcher. I'm not giving advice nor diagnosing anything and my only experience is myself. About two mo...
Collapse
 
scottishross profile image
Ross Henderson

Evan, this is a brilliant idea and I'm going to keep an eye on this. I went through CBT to help with PTSD and the linked Disassociative Disorder I gained with it and I literally cannot recommend CBT enough.

Please let us know when it's released on Android :)

Collapse
 
lssweatherhead profile image
Laura Weatherhead

I love this, and the design/wireframes encapsulate the focus of the app perfectly! I have submitted a survey response and would be more than happy to pitch in if you needed a spare pair of coding hands (depending on where/when you needed them! :) )

Collapse
 
annarankin profile image
Anna Rankin

Love this. I agree that the mood tracking apps out there right now are really clunky in general - it's really hard to find the right level of granularity when it comes to tracking thoughts and feelings. The mockups look beautiful! I look forward to seeing where you take it next 🙂

Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Submitted the survey. Am I missing something or do I not see a link to the GitHub?

Collapse
 
flaque profile image
Evan • Edited

Whoops should probably be more explicit. This hasn't actually been released yet on Github; cleaning up code before I release it. And thanks Ben! ❤️

Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Ah, cool. Well this project seems totally worth it to me! We need more mental-health-positive apps and I’m not surprised the current market is weak.

Collapse
 
luc45 profile image
Random Dev • Edited

Hi Evan,

My mother, brother and sister have bipolar disorders and psychotic episodes, and, being it mostly genetic, I have the propension to have it too.

I didn't know what CBT was, but I used a similar technique over the time to control myself in times of extreme anxiety. I started looking at these episodes as mental cancer. Cancer is when a cell multiplies itself without control.

If I don't control my thoughts - they branch into possibilities and, as you try to keep up with the branching, it generates more possibilities, and you end up lost in thoughts and anxious.

What happens to you seems to be a process of auto-suggestion so strong that you believe in one branch as if it were reality, right? You don't get lost in the branches. You focus on one of them 'till the end, being it truth or false, and generally, that branch is the feeded by fear?

CBT seems like a great way to deal with that, because, if we are humble enough to admit it, our modern society doesn't know for a fact the true nature of the mind and consciousness. We use chemicals to treat the mind, while is the mind that generates the chemicals in normal circumstances. When you act on the mind, you heal permanently, when you act on the chemical level, you are drying water without fixing the leak.

I would like to give Quirk a go when it's released, to identify low self-esteem thoughts and how to stop them, this kind of thing - in the branching of thoughts, CBT is like a compass.

Collapse
 
flaque profile image
Evan

Hey Lucas,

In the meantime, you should should read the New Mood Therapy. It looks really cheesy, but it's a good overview.

Collapse
 
michael_hiltz profile image
Michael Hiltz • Edited

Evan,

Im not a developer. I am an outpatient psychiatric nurse practitioner. You really hit it SPOT ON with Quirk. I use Android and can give you feedback from clinician and user perspective.

Any interest in building an electronic medical record system for outpatient psychiatry? I have a ton of experience, but no code/dev skills.

Oh? Is it called Freak?

Best,
Mike

Collapse
 
flaque profile image
Evan • Edited

Freak is sort of an early prototype, I figured “quirk” was a lot nicer name. I called it freak originally because the term “panic” was a keyword in the programming language I built it in and it go too confusing. When I was a kid, I called my panic attacks “freak outs” since I wasn’t sure what they were. But the term “freak” has a pretty negative conotation when used as a noun, so i renamed the whole thing to “quirk.”

I’d definitely be interested in your thoughts/opinions however. I’m not a doc, and I’m most definitely gonna miss something. Send me a DM on twitter: @flaqueeau

As for EMR systems, as much as I would love to try and tackle that problem, I generally maintain a “two-project” rule. Right now, building the developer platform for Segment is my #1 project and Quirk is my weekend/opensource project.

Collapse
 
antonrich profile image
Anton

Is there a way to couple it with HRV (heart rate variability) and get the data together?

Collapse
 
flaque profile image
Evan • Edited

Actually this was the original reason I started working on freak. I wanted to be able to combine health tracking data with these to see if I could write something to predict or at least identify panic attacks.

I'd love to offer CSV exports and full data access from this app!

Collapse
 
lynnewritescode profile image
Lynne Finnigan

I love the concept and design, and would most likely use it! Great idea, so many mental health resources are so ugly and not well made.

Collapse
 
jess profile image
Jess Lee

This is awesome. My biggest issue with existing apps is one of the reasons you mention: feature creep. Makes the overhead so much bigger, and then I give up. Looking forward to seeing what's next!

Collapse
 
flaque profile image
Evan

Holy crap yeah. It’s very very easy to bite off more than you can chew and I do it all the time. Focus, focus, focus. Understand that on average, a programmer writes about 25 lines of bug-free, working code in a full work day.

Collapse
 
juliatorrejon profile image
Julia Torrejón

Brilliant idea, Evan! I love the design and concept behind the app!🙂

Collapse
 
lloydmangnall profile image
Lloyd • Edited

Good beginning! If you're ever interested in working on this problem full-time, there may be a place for you at AbleTo. Keep up the good work!

Collapse
 
errietta profile image
Erry Kostala

Hey, thanks for opening up, it's not easy to do!
I've struggled with similar things. I'd love to try this out if you can send me a link (android)
Cheers

Collapse
 
chiangs profile image
Stephen Chiang

I really love the design on this too!

Collapse
 
flaque profile image
Evan

If you’ve got suggestions on this, I’m all ears 👂 ❤️