After completing my DHMS in 1994, I got married. Like every other doctor, my husband and I settled down in our clinical practice. We had our aspirations, always wanting to grow out and do something better. We had that opportunity in 1999. Despite my twins being just a year old, I ran Shreeji Exports and E-Com, my first experience as an entrepreneur. However, this did not last long and by 2002, as with most IT companies in the US, were going through recession. This marked an end.
Having gained experience and confidence started an IT company, Locally Shreeji Software Solutions from 2003 to 2005, getting in business, orders and maintaining customers did not pose a great challenge. I found a way out of all these challenges by opting for higher education. I completed my degree with a Gold Medal in 2003 and in 2006, I moved ahead with a never give-up attitude.
With my husband having trained in US for Psychiatry and managing children with special needs, we set out on a mission of Sculpting Minds Shaping Future’. Thus Vrudhi Research Foundation was born. We worked and grew enough to be working with over 55,000 children annually across city of Mumbai, with the following four domain expertise; Academic, Behaviour, Career and Developmental. Our center provided various services under one roof.
My role is to provide homeopathy and with my keen interest in Dietetics and Nutrition, I am researching the role of food as medicine for children with ADD/HD.
Having worked for over a decade for mental health through our various initiatives at Vrudhi, we saw a growing need to ensure mental health delivery system. Edupsyche was thus born with the prime objective of Remoulding Redefining & Refining Mental Health.
We wanted to reach out to the population at large and ensure better mental health service delivery across the country. Having worked for mental health, we realized the need to have outreach and with my IT experience and IT being the only way to take things nationally, we saw this as an opportunity and felt that if we combine IT with this we would be able to reach out at a faster pace than otherwise.
With a huge gap between mental health service providers and those seeking services, Edupsyche took up the following challenges associated with Mental Health.
- De-stigmatise and Decatastrophise mental health.
- Imparting right Skills and training to mental health professionals.
- Bridging the gap between Mental Health Professionals and those seeking Mental Health Services.
Mentagram our answer to all the said challenges:
Having worked with people going through mental health difficulties we realized the huge gap and difficulties faced by clients to seek help for mental health services, also while talking to mental health professionals we understood that 30% client visiting psychiatrists are chronic cases and these contribute to 20-50% dropout cases in psychiatric practice. While conceiving a solution to bridge this gap, we realized that tele -psychiatry and tele-counseling could be the road ahead, we thought of providing a solution with a vision of making mental health Accessible – Available and Affordable to all. We struggled to understand the difficulties of professionals and clients and took us nearly 9 months to deliver our baby äóìMentagramäó.
Mentagram is a mobile app to seek information, have virtual consultations, seek psychological assessments and get medicines. It provides an end to end solution to the user.
The Need:
Burden of Mental Health in India:
- No of People with Mental Health Issues – 75 Million
- No of adolescent Suicides – 148 per 100000
- Corporate employee and MH- 4 in 10 having a MH problem.
- Geriatric Mental Health- 12.5% have depression.
- No of Mental Health Professionals – 4000 psychiatrists and 10,000 psychologists
- Doctor -patient ratio – 1:343000
For Psychiatrists:
- Mentagram works to decrease their dropout rates and help them reach out to clients seeking therapy.
- It helps them to maintain an Electronic Medical Health Record.
For Psychologists/ Counselors:
- Works as a back office and front office.
- Gives them a virtual platform to have flexi work hours.
For Users:
- They can get scientific information on the portal.
- Booking online appointments, Video Consultation, Audio Call, Texting with their Professional.
- Storing Mental Health Records Online for the entire family.
- Seeking online Psychological assessments.
- Seeking Prescription and Medicines online.
It will greatly reduce the high drop rate among chronic cases of psychiatrist predominantly since they find it difficult either to seek consultation for themselves or family at their convenient time, also create a non-threatening medium for those who shy from seeking MENTAL health services.
Mentagram is available on google playstore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mentagram&hl=en
Website: www.mentagram.in