BENGALURU: Arjun Bharadwaj (24), a resident of Bengaluru, who committed suicide by jumping off a Mumbai hotel and recording the act live on Facebook was certainly tech-savvy. A lot of self-care tech interventions are available for such tech savvy youngsters at their fingertips if they seek help in their initial stages of depression. PUSH-D, an app developed by NIMHANS, is one of them.
April 7 marks World Health Day and this year’s theme is ‘Let’s Talk Depression’. These tech interventions are aimed at encouraging more people to get help and talk about depression.
PUSH-D (Practice and Use Self-Help for Depression) is a computer-based self-care programme that can be useful in dealing with depression. The app has seen 1,000 downloads till now.
This programme, however, is not meant for diagnosis of depression and is not a substitute for services provided by a mental health professional.
“Once patients contact PUSH-D, the team conducts an initial screening for 45 minutes over Skype or a call. The team has received at least 250 calls since November last year, 60 of whom were given usernames and passwords to log in to our programme,” said a senior research fellow in the team. Those who required intervention of doctors were directed by the team.
A user will have access to the number of exercises he or she has completed, and the number of times and duration one has logged in.
“Users have come with problems ranging from career, studies, work pressure, marital discord and relationship issues,” the research fellow said.
“While the programme mandates face-to-face initial screening at NIMHANS, there are some who have called from as far as Delhi and Chandigarh. For them, we conducted initial screening through Skype,” he said.
While there are other online counselling platforms like ePsyclinic, YourDOST and Healtheminds.com, PUSH-D is different. “On these platforms, the users log in to speak to a therapist. But on PUSH-D there is psychotherapy,” he said.
This project is part of a study titled ‘Strengthening the pyramid of mental health care in India: Development and pilot testing of a self-care intervention for depression’. This is funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi. The two-year study started in June 2015 will end this September.