Rising Deerfield High Senior Promotes Happiness, Well-Being In App

DEERFIELD, IL — Cole Gawin understands that he certainly isn’t alone in having experienced more stress and anxiety over the past two years than high school students in the past have endured during their formative years.

But after dealing with remote and hybrid learning, a host of COVID-19 restrictions, and other pandemic-related stressors since his sophomore year at Deerfield High School, Gawin realized that if he was experiencing negativity and mental hardships tied to the pandemic, there were almost certainly other students who knew exactly what he was coping with.

That’s when Gawin developed the Well mobile app — a tool designed to help students, as well as working professionals, find more positivity in their lives at a time when joy can come at a premium in the everyday world.

After launching the app in the spring of 2021, Well has been downloaded more than 5,000 times by users and has received the seal of approval from mental health professionals in a project that has had a life-altering effect on Gawin's own well-being.

For Gawin, who will soon embark on his senior year at Deerfield High, devoting countless hours to developing and improving the app hasn’t been an easy journey. From conducting research on positive psychology to reaching out to local therapists and other mental health professionals to verify his findings, Gawin has developed a helpful mobile destination that he hopes will allow users to gain free access to valuable tips and keys to finding a healthier lifestyle.

And what started with a Ted Talk about how working professionals need to step away from their daily stress and take more time for themselves inspired Gawin to use his programming and graphic design to create the app to improve the mindset of students like himself.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gawin found himself throwing himself into a project that he admits he never expected to take off as it has. He found himself and his family dealing, in their own ways, with the effects of being quarantined, which reignited his passion for wanting to make a positive change.

And as they say, there’s an app for that — or at least there is now thanks to Gawin’s work over the past couple of years.

“Originally, I had no big plans or no big intentions on growing (the app) out or reaching on new avenues to get people to download the app and getting them to start using it,” Gawin told Patch on Wednesday.

“But I realized it really could make a positive impact on my community and communities around the country and around the world, all of whom we all struggle from the pandemic and the stress and feelings of being overwhelmed we all feel.”

Gawin built the app around five guideposts, which his research showed him could allow users to find more happiness. Activities of performing acts of gratitude, acts of kindness, writing a reflective journal entry, exercise, and meditation when practiced on a daily basis could help eliminate stress and produce more happiness, he found.

He specifically targeted his fellow students the most as being the audience he connects with most effectively. After dealing with his own stress and anxiety over the past two years, Gawin said he wanted to create a tool that would resonate with users of his own age and that needed a break from negativity and everything else they had dealt with since the start of the pandemic.

Gawin hopes that the Well app is a coping mechanism for students who may not feel comfortable seeking help from a therapist while dealing with some of the stigmas that exist among teenagers in dealing with stress and anxiety.

“I feel like the pandemic has had such disastrous effects on mental health that it is so important for us to now be cognizant and almost hyper-aware of our mental health and that we’re not afraid to speak of it and talk to people and get help when we need it,” Gawin said.

The app is designed to be interactive and allows users to discover an individualized path toward finding their own happiness and addressing their own mental health needs, Gawin said. The key, though, was making the app accessible to anyone at no charge to ensure that anyone in need of finding more positivity could do so without any restraints.

Gawin has worked with universities such as DePaul, the University of Chicago, Rice University, and Carnegie Mellon to get schools to implement the Well app into their respective collegiate programs. For Gawin, who won a COVID-19 Hackathon competition in developing the app, reaching out to academic and mental health professionals unsolicited wasn’t easy.

But for someone who is a self-professed introvert, creating and pitching the app to professionals has taken Gawin on a journey of self-exploration that he never expected.

He is now working to translate the app into a number of different languages, which would allow users from around the North Shore and beyond to use the tool. With the number of downloads and monthly users growing since the Well app launched, Gawin now hopes it can reach a larger audience who may still be struggling with anxiety now more than 2 ½ years after the pandemic began.

His message is simple: Taking small, calculated steps can make a major difference when repeated on a daily basis and turn baby steps into a major life change.

“It’s not that easy for people to look up ‘How can I be more positive?' or ‘How can I have a better outlook on life?’”, Gawin said, highlighting not only the pandemic but also recent mass shootings, including the one in neighboring Highland Park at its July 4 parade.

“We’ve all been so overwhelmed with feelings of negativity that it’s important to focus on the positive aspects of life. So, I hope people feel more positive and have better mindsets and more positive outlooks on life after using the app because that’s been the main goal throughout the whole process of developing it.”