E-counseling-based Expressive Writing Therapy Platform for Overcoming Student Mental Health Problems

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted increasing mental health problems in Indonesia. People were haunted by anxiety, fear, and mental stress resulting from isolation activities, as well as physical restrictions and conditions of uncertainty. Even data before the pandemic showed that mental health problems were a task that had not been entirely resolved, both in Indonesia nationally and internationally. According to data from the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Indonesia, in 2016, there were 1,800 data on suicides in one year. This is equivalent to a total of 5 people who commit suicide in one day. Even sadder, it is known that 47.7% of suicide victims are aged 10 to 39 years, namely teenagers and productive age, including university students. Therefore, this study aims to design an e-counseling-based expressive writing therapy platform for college students. The expressive writing therapy method was chosen because it has a positive effect on depressive symptoms. The final result of this research is a system design in the form of a UML diagram that describes the actors, process flows, and system components, and also the prototype of the system. © 2022 Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science (IAES).