An app that will teach men to understand and manage their feelings

Kudos on laudable goal. I hope you can find a way to make it work.

The problem, of course, is that therapy only helps people if they want to be helped. And CBT is based on talk therapy, so it's tricky to do without a human therapist. So you've got a few things to overcome.

I would point out that it might help to have some kind of positive feedback for entering data. One example: a friend uses a mood tracker which gives you an adult-coloring-book page based on your mood. That is, a sad mood might result in a drab color palette, which is good for expressing the mood. A positive mood might yield a brighter color palette.

Of course adult-coloring-books are also female-coded -- though who knows what you might be able to accomplish with the right images and right color palettes. Finding something male-coded might be tricky. What's male coded? Sports? Porn? How about "enter your mood and get a porn image to match it"? Stupid, but maybe the right kind of stupid.

The "Man up!" mindset forces men to suppress their emotions, and society actively encourages it. A number of my male friends have recently confessed to suffering from this, which led me to the idea of making an app in which artificial intelligence recognizes emotions and teaches how to work with them, making men stronger, more resilient, and conscious.

PROBLEM Men have been taught throughout their lives that displaying emotions is a sign of weakness. It is the way almost every traditional culture is set up. As a result, we men stop paying attention to our feelings, understanding and respecting them, which can lead to breakdowns endangering ourselves and those around us.

Over the years, men get used to disguising their feelings to such an extent that they often cannot even understand how they are feeling right now. A lack of intense emotions and their excess often lead to reduced overall satisfaction with life, which is more dangerous than it seems at first glance.

A question therefore arises, "What should a man pressured by society with its "toxic masculinity" do to re-learn how to treat and manage his emotions properly?"

SOLUTION I want to create an app capable of measuring the instantaneous amplitude of emotional fluctuations. This app will help to understand the feelings we are experiencing and teach us how to balance our emotional state through helpful activities: journal writing, mini-concentration games, or breathing practices.

OUTCOME The most critical thing for me today is to get your feedback. Please share in the comments how big of an issue this is for you or your loved ones; what essential points I've overlooked; would you like to participate in a closed beta test or interview? If yes, feel free to complete the survey above, too.

PRACTICING A LITTLE BIT BUT EVERY DAY I decided to make an app that would instill in users a small but very useful habit — to monitor their emotional state regularly and, if necessary, to help balance unwanted outbursts and mood swings. A neural network will be responsible for the objective recognition of emotions from video, with recognition accuracy that differs from a live expert by only 3-4%. If the system detects any signs of unbalance or other disturbing patterns, it will offer the user one of the five-minute sessions: journaling and giving a rational explanation for each of the situations that caused the outburst; 10 breathing practices to choose from; a mini-game to increase concentration. The more "emotion measurements" the users take, the better the system will adjust to them, and the more accurate the weekly analytical summaries will become. It will be easy to see what tangible changes have taken place, what needs more attention, and what the next goal is, almost like in a game.

EMOTION TRACKER IN A MANLY PACKAGE The apps in the Mental Wellbeing category generally look like something exclusively for girls. Soft colors, birds, flowers, and meditating characters with their eyes closed. These applications can be very helpful, but a man, influenced by "toxic masculinity," would not believe a product with such visual solutions. He would think, "This one's not made for me." I will try to lower the barrier of entry by giving the user something that engages at first glance, something they want to be a part of.

BIG GOAL I want my app to be an entry point for men who want to work on their emotional balance but don't know where to start. Someday they will become experts at it themselves, and I want them to always have a tool at hand when things get especially tough. Perhaps some of my users will be motivated by the data visualization and recommendations of artificial intelligence to book their first session with a psychotherapist. And at the end of the day, if we can keep at least one person from doing something rash, irreversible and terrible, it will be a significant contribution to the world's mental well-being.