These teentrepreneurs built a mental health app that embodies the saying “it’s okay to not be okay.
Charlie and Hannah Lucas created the ‘Not OK’ app to help raise awareness about mental health issues. It allows users to quickly ask for help. The app has over 100,000 active users who use it to cope with their mental health issues and remain safe.
Hannah Lucas came up with the idea after being diagnosed with a medical condition which caused her to constantly feel scared and alone. Hannah and her younger brother, Charlie Lucas, 13, then decided to create an app to help people in distress.
Charlie used the coding skills he learned in summer camp to design the app. Hannah then pitched the app while taking a summer class on entrepreneurship at Georgia Tech. The professors were so intrigued by the siblings’ creation that they connected the family with a development company in Savannah.
NotOK launched in both iOS and Android versions in January 2018. The app, which comes with a $2.99 monthly fee, allows users to press a button that sends a text message to up to five preselected contacts.
The text, along with a link to the user’s current GPS location, shows up on the contacts’ phones with the message, “Hey, I’m not OK. Please call me, text me, or come find me.”
The siblings were awarded Mental Health America’s mPower Award, the National Alliance on Mental Illness Georgia’s Young Leader Award, and the National Black History Blacks in Tech Award, in 2018.
If you want to follow Hannah and Charlie’s journey with the app. Follow them Instagram here.
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