Strides Over Stigma: Designing a Platform for Mental Health Advocacy
How I founded a wellness initiative and built a full-stack TypeScript platform to support community mental health action.
Most nonprofit websites function as brochures. They describe an organization and leave the actual work to email threads and spreadsheets. When I founded Strides Over Stigma, I wanted the website to carry part of that work, so I built a full-stack platform that handles event registration and resource sharing directly.
Throughout this post, “platform” means the software that removes friction between a person and an action. It does not mean the landing page.
The Baseline Flaw
A static site optimizes for being read. Stigma persists because people read about mental health and never act on it. The platform targets three specific points where that drop-off happens:
- Typical Website Flaw: Unstructured registration through Google Forms, Instagram DMs, or manual emails.
- Platform Solution: Direct web registration with live slot tracking and instant confirmation, preventing overbooking.
- Typical Website Flaw: Unvetted links scattered arbitrarily across static blog pages.
- Platform Solution: A curated, high-contrast repository of local tools, verified helplines, and emergency contacts.
- Typical Website Flaw: Content is consumed passively and immediately abandoned.
- Platform Solution: Every page is intentionally structured around a next concrete action: run, connect, or share.
The Stack & Cognitive Load Theory
The platform handles sensitive personal interactions, so I chose tools that catch mistakes before users do. The interface design directly follows cognitive load theory: a person in a difficult emotional state has less working memory available, so every extraneous choice or noisy visual element increases the likelihood they leave.
Component-driven UI with compile-time type safety preventing runtime client failures on registration flows.
Soft, accessible color palettes and clean contrast ratios designed to reduce cognitive strain for anxious users.
Custom registration logic with instant slot decrements and automated confirmation emails, removing human administrative delay.
Strict data isolation collecting only necessary attendee contact details for the specific event, with zero third-party trackers.
Results & Community Engagement
The initiative is now a recognized wellness effort in the Reno region, and the platform has managed several community events for students and professionals. Code volume and concurrent users are the wrong measures. The useful measure is whether attendees left feeling less alone and more willing to talk, and the platform’s job was to make showing up easy enough for that to happen.
Trade-Offs
Why it exists: Building custom slot tracking and email automation requires significantly more upfront work than embedding a third-party form.
Why it is acceptable: Gives us complete control over data privacy, user flow, and removes third-party tracking cookies.
Why it exists: We collect only what is strictly required to hold a spot at an event, refusing to gather demographic telemetry.
Why it is acceptable: Respects attendee vulnerability in sensitive mental health contexts.
Why it exists: Software cannot substitute for a physical circle of human beings running together.
Why it is acceptable: The platform is designed solely as logistics infrastructure to get people into the room.
What I Took From It
This project joined two parts of my life that I used to treat as separate: software engineering and community service. TypeScript and database schemas are only tools. Their value is set by the problem they are pointed at.
Related Project:
Strides Over Stigma: Mental Health & Wellness Platform
Explore the Initiative →