Community "U2plus" which supports a melancholiac

Japan has melancholiacs more than 1 million people. The number of them is increasing, but prejudice and discrimination against depression are left in Japan firmly. However, this Web community may change the Japanese present conditions.

http://u2plus.jp/

U2plus was launched by Japanese Yasuhiro Toudou. According to his blog, once, he suffered from depression and thought about suicide. However, he made U2plus from this experience. He met the engineer and designer who have experience of depression like him in Twitter and a blog and started this project.

This is a slide of U2plus announced in 2012 Social Media Week Tokyo.

Smw0216

View more presentations from Yasuhiro Toudou

Archive of Ustream is here 
Video streaming by Ustream

U2plus has the program which used cognitive-behavioral therapy as the base, and a function which the users of depression support mutually.  Users share the positive occurrence in a daily life mutually. And the feedback is carried out only through a buttons. Because it is not a free text, the negative chain does not occur. In addition, U2plus does not have the friend function either. Because friend application and the block produce the stress with pleasure. Therefore the timeline of U2plus resembles Tumblr than Twitter.

U2plus opens in January and has the registration of 1,000 users and 30 counselors now. Surprisingly they opened the English version of U2plus. This is rare in the Japanese community where weak in other languages.

http://u2plus.com/