We want to build open-source solutions and standards for using AI to solve mental health challenges. The goal is to apply DPI knowledge and practices that can help professionals deeply explore and understand the latest advancements in AI and how they can be applied to use-cases in mental health specific to India.
Currently availing mental health has a lot of issues such as: Stigma - In India, mental health issues are not considered as healthcare issues. Any person suffering from mental issues is considered weak. Stigma and discrimination often undermine social support structures. Persons suffering from such issues are often tagged as ‘lunatics’ by society. This leads to a vicious cycle of shame, suffering and isolation of the patients. Lack of awareness - leading to issues like undetected issues and self diagnosis Availability of trained Mental Healthcare Personnel: There is a severe shortage of mental healthcare workforce in India. According to the WHO, in 2011, there were 0.301 psychiatrists and 0.047 psychologists for every 100,000 patients suffering from a mental health disorder in India. In contrast, the ratio in most developed countries is in excess of 10. Affordability - Most Mental healthcare sessions are costly as per Indian incomes, hence out of reach of most population(~95%) Budgetary Constraints - Low budget Allocation: Developed countries allocate 5-18% of their annual healthcare budget on mental healthcare, while India allocates roughly 0.05% (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2014) of its healthcare budget. This is the lowest among all G20 countries. Despite a rise in mental illness issues, the Union Ministry of Health allocated less than 1% of its budget to directly deal with psychological illnesses in 2022.
AI Companion Solves for personalization, accessibility (available 24/7), affordability
Personalized and contextual responses Emotional understanding and support Privacy-focused, with no central data storage Supplemental real healthcare professional support → Escalation features Multi-user chat interface capabilities with option to invite partner / parent → Shared wellness journey Cultural Sensitivity in Indian context
Very personal approach with focus on listening and emphasising Available in 22 Indic regional languages, especially on mobile devices Stores the user conversation locally, not on cloud -> ensuring complete privacy Will provide helpful resources for most common mental health problems. However, it'll not prescribe any medicines For training the bot , we can use federated learning Will be available as an API, so interested people can try this and build on top of it, based on their use case Aim is to get national-level adoption If serious, there’ll option to reach out to a psychiatrist or support community groups e.g. peer to peer network Have L1/L2/L3 level of support
Can we gamify the whole conversation? If yes, then how? Can we nudge users to adopt healthier behaviour? In particular, we can warn users about what not to do - relying on superstitions, isolation, labelling, and other unhelpful tactics Give positive self-affirmation, create safety plan, etc Can we develop Emotional Intelligence that understands not just emotions, but context behind it Can we detect emotional status ike stress level using voice(like hume) and then support him Can we create a timeline tracker let’s say six month plan for meditation and track streak Can we give them a phone number they can call to? The bot will mainly listen , empathize and offer safe advice
Please read the full doc and feel free to add comments here - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H8-oJmMy0r28kYup9vqt8VGDlY_cCFW_2M07XJxWpFU/edit?usp=sharing