1.0 PROBLEM
Phobia treatment typically requires professional exposure therapy, which has cost and access barriers — and many people never seek it. The idea behind Counter Phobia is self-directed training: let users detect and gradually train against their phobias at their own comfort level, from home, so more people are willing to work on their mental health over time.
2.0 APPROACH
The app is a Flask web application with an OpenCV-powered trainer, styled with Bootstrap. The first trainer targets scopophobia (fear of being stared at); the site’s structure is deliberately extensible so additional phobia trainers — insects, heights — can be added as new modules without reworking the platform.
The whole build happened inside the 5-day window of MindfulHacks 2022, starting from zero prior knowledge of Python, OpenCV, or Flask — freeCodeCamp’s OpenCV tutorials and Krish Naik’s Flask series carried the learning, with prior HTML/CSS/Bootstrap experience covering the front end.
3.0 NOTES
First hackathon, in person, solo build. The mental-health talks at the event framed the brief — build something that lifts mental-health blocks — and the project was scoped to something completable and demoable within the five days.