Frank Warren, founder of the highly popular PostSecret, has released a new component to his blog, called the PostSecret app. This app, which provides mailed secrets in real time, allows other readers to directly reply to the secret holders. Warren hopes that the app will not only provide users of PostSecret to be able to communicate with each other, but he also hopes it will help prevent and protect people suffering from mental health issues.
Warren started PostSecret as a “creative prank,” he said, saying that he’d have people send him their secrets on blank postcards. Warren soon realized that he could use what started out as a prank as a way to make real change.
“I was working at the HopeLine [suicide prevention line], during the midnight to 4 a.m. shift,” he said. After seeing many of the secrets he received dealt with mental health including mentions of suicide, he thought to use his blog to raise awareness for suicide prevention. One way the PostSecret community has given back is by helping develop the International Suicide Prevention Wiki (ISP Wiki), which is the most comprehensive and current listing of suicide prevention hotlines and “chat-lines” in the world.
The blog has now become the largest advertisement-free blog in the world and the community fostered around the site is a place of non-judgement. The app intends to extend that type of community to the mobile setting.
A quarter of a million secrets have already been shared through the app, and Warren feels that the app could be used in a way to prevent suicides or other adverse actions due to mental health. “Similar to how Google can be used as an early warning system for flu outbreak by analyzing which areas are looking for topics on the flu, this app could be used for finding which schools have the most issues with suicides [and other mental health issues],” said Warren. The International Suicide Prevention Wiki is also included in the app. It is also available to any person or organization to incorporate into other apps.
The app can also be used to analyze how to help people in the future. “The app could be used to see what issues are percolating or bubbling just below our awareness,” he said. “We might know the issues that people might talk about on the Dr. Phil show 10 years from now that they aren’t talking about now.” Through looking through the app in an archaeological fashion, he said, we could analyze how to better help people with certain issues.
The PostSecret app is available for download on iTunes for $1.99. It will be available for the Android later this year.
