Sopore teen launches portal for online mental health consultations
Post by on Monday, December 6, 2021
A teenager from Dooru area of Sopore has developed a portal ‘Your Friendd’ to help people get online mental health consultations who are undergoing depression and anxiety.
Musaib Altaf, a computer science student at IIT Bhubaneswar, told Rising Kashmir that due to a multitude of reasons there is a surge in cases of depression. “I felt I should do something to help such people overcome stress and lead a health life again.”
The 18-year-old says he was going through a book ‘A walkout of anxiety’ which motivated him to lace up and do something practically to deal with mental health challenges.
“After reading the book I noticed that those who are going through depression do not usually share their agony and thoughts with anyone. I thought if there will be any platform for such people it will give them a sigh of relief and since then I started work on the same,” he recalls.
The computer science student developed a portal to help people going through depression.
“The ‘Your Friendd’ portal was launched this year at Government Degree College, Sopore. Its aim is to guide people who are having depression due to various reasons.
"Many people are unable to tell their difficulties owing to social stigma attached to it. However concealing such things won’t help either and eventually leads to rise in such cases,” he says.
“These days a lot of people go through these problems and to make things worse generally such people do not vent their feelings for the fear of being called ‘mentally ill'”.
He says it is hard to change the perception of society “that is why I came up with ‘Your Friendd” online mental health consultations portal.”
“On this portal people can register themselves for consultation from medical professionals and if required, from world-renowned doctors also. Those who do not want to disclose their identity can submit their problem anonymously and they will get an equal response.
“We just hold your hand, support you morally and help you out,” he adds.
Musaib says the interface on the portal is user-friendly. “It is like people use social media platforms and almost in the same way they will use the facility to get rid of the depression and anxiety,” he says, adding “users just have to just submit their details in brief and we are collecting them on the back-end and within 24 hours we start counseling them.”
The teenager says he has also developed an android application, to reach to the maximum number of people possible. “There is also an application available on the play store and we are working to improve its quality in the future to provide better services.”
He says mental health should be the top priority of the government and more focus needs to be paid to deal with mental health issues.
