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Texas Student Creates App to Share Mental Health Resources

A former student of Ector County Independent School District won his local Congressional App Challenge with an app that uses questionnaires to assess mental health conditions, then shares resources related to the results.

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(TNS) — Before Ajay Gundlapalli won Congressman August Pfluger's 2024 Congressional App Challenge for Texas' 11th District, he had studied computer science, but never tried to develop an app.

A former Ector County ISD student who now attends Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H., Gundlapalli's app is called Querapy. He developed it to educate and empower students to better understand and care for their mental health.

He said the app uses questionnaires that are generally accepted in the medical industry. They all aim to assess certain mental health conditions.

"There's one for depression, anxiety, eating disorders and stuff like that. The app basically allows users to take these questionnaires in a free and accessible way. Then using their results, the app also provides valuable, free and accessible resources that may help educate the user on their condition or provide background information, or maybe even like provide some tools that might help," Gundlapalli said.

He added that he thinks the app could be a really helpful resource for a lot of people and it's very necessary. He would like to get the app into schools and districts.

"But regarding the award, I think I'm very happy that I was able to receive the award. I put a lot of effort into this app, and I'm glad that I was able to receive this," he added.

The app took him three or four months to develop.

He had heard about the contest and that someone from Odessa had won it a few years back.

Gundlapalli had completed the app and thought the challenge would be a great way to showcase it and also see if it was good enough to be something that "functions and is useful for people."

On a connected item, he said he and his sister, Anika, have formed Foundation MHE, a nonprofit for mental health empowerment and education for teens. He is the founder and president.

Anika is the founder and vice president. For more information, visit foundationmhe.org.

"I've written blog articles for that organization" and he has worked on the website quite a bit, Gundlapalli said.

"I decided to make something that's a very active tool that can be used freely and accessibly anywhere, which is when I decided to start coding Querapy," he added.

Gundlapalli has been attending Phillips Exeter since September.

"It's definitely a very challenging place to be, but I think it is challenging in a good way. I'm happy to be surrounded by a lot of innovative and passionate people, all pursuing big dreams. ... There's a great support system here and I think it's truly a wonderful place to be," he added.

He's not completely sure what he wants to do when he gets older.

"But I do know I've enjoyed economics and philosophy a lot. I want to use those passions to explore areas like welfare economics and micro economic decision theory to also like explore how those fields can lead to the betterment of society and more humanitarian approaches," Gundlapalli said.

He added that he sees himself doing more work with code and computer science.

"If that path leads me to doing more apps, I would definitely do it. I think I would also love to start to do updates on Querapy, incorporate more things into it, because I do think it could definitely benefit from some more features.

"I think the biggest thing is finding the best tool for any given task. If that's an app going forward for anything I'd like to do in the future, I think I'd definitely be open to creating another app," he said.

©2025 the Odessa American (Odessa, Texas). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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