Real-Time WebRTC-Based Application for Psychological Support During COVID-19

Abstract

Crisis or outbreak may cause any individual to be mentally and emotionally affected. The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (henceforth Covid-19) pandemic had cause a deep and universal impact on global mental health as many struggles to survive within restricted and uncommon lifestyle. During the Covid-19 pandemic, any individual may experience stress, anxiety, sadness and loneliness. Therefore, some of affected individuals might need a platform to enable them to express their thoughts and feelings anonymously without exposing their identities. This paper proposed a real-time WebRTC-based communication platform to facilitate the needs of mental support by affected individual during the pandemic and Movement Control Order (henceforth MCO). The proposed model uses the concept of random call and anonymity during the two-way communication via Voice over IP (VoIP). The application implements WebRTC to support the real-time communication. The signalling server is used to initiate the connection between the client and STUN/TURN server to run the network addresses translation. Furthermore, to ensure anonymity in the communication channel, a randomization algorithm has is implemented.

Psychological Support Application Using The Real-Time Webrtc: A Case Study Of Undergraduate In Malaysian And Indonesian Higher Learning Institutions

“…It can also help reduce costs and improve the quality of care. According to our previous paper [6], by using a WebRTC compatible browser, a user can, in one hand, communicate in real-time and in the other hand, stay anonymous. Thus, the WebRTC application can be one of the effective methods in reducing mental health and psychological problems among undergraduates.…”

“…According to [13], social support can provide problem solving strategies to the individual, reduce the importance of the problem, and alleviate the harmful effects of stress experience. The implementation of psychological support platform as the model we had proposed in our previous paper [6] is used to fit this issue requirement. This application allows the caller and the receiver to communicate via Voice over IP (VoIP) anonymously.…”

“…Examples of applications that use RTC are WhatsApp, Skype, Telegram, Viber and others. An application developed using the WebRTC [5] open source project that was first introduced by Google in 2011 [6]. WebRTC allows real-time communication via the JavaScript API where users can scan the web to experience peer-to-peer synchronization via WebRTC.…”

“…WebRTC allows real-time communication via the JavaScript API where users can scan the web to experience peer-to-peer synchronization via WebRTC. WebRTC provides browsers and mobile applications with audio/video calls, chats and peer-topeer file sharing without the need for third-party software or plugins [6].…”

“…Our previous research [6] only proposed the use of WebRTC to enable the peer connection with the implementation of Voice over IP (VoIP). The research only focused on the architecture and random process algorithm for call process without studying and investigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on undergraduates' psychological health due to the new norm that they have to face in their learning process.…”