Mental Health support during Covid-19 pandemic

Inspiration

One of the things I noticed when I arrived back in Europe after a long stay in South America, was that the people in Germany, where I live, are more stressed, nervous and anxious than normal. News stories I have read indicate that even in the most developed nations on earth, people are suffering with the effects of the social isolation measure that have been declared in most countries. I am convinced that there is a need for counselling and mental health care all over the world.

What it does

This solution is based on a mentoring and coaching idea I developed for South America, and have tried in Peru. It presumes communication facilities are available (not a given in most developing countries around the world, but mobile phone networks do exist, and most people do have mobile phones). Communication applications to have voice or video conversations are plentiful. What is missing is a way to find a councillor; somebody you can trust and who will listen to your deepest thoughts and deal with them in an appropriate way for you.

How does it work

My solution solves the following issues I have identified: A - Finding a councillor. Connecting people based on language skills and availability. B - Controlling the session. Making sure there is no abuse and progress is monitored. C - Quality control. Making sure evaluations are done to a specific standard and controlled. D - Supporting councillors. Making sure the councillors are supported and receive training and support when they need it.

The solution offers councillors (a willing ear) to people who need it. The counselling session is evaluated, as are the councillors and the "client". Abuse or inappropriate behaviour is monitored, and a system is in place to deal with it. Councillors are receive remuneration for their efforts. Councillors are continually evaluated, supported and trained.

We created an Entrepreneurship workshop in Peru, where the goal was to stimulate people to start their own businesses. These were people from poorer communities, where workshops were used to select the entrepreneurs and develop ideas. Once people were ready to start, we would give them seed money and support their journey. Volunteer mentors and coaches were used to accompany the beginning entrepreneurs on their journey. The tools we used were paper and pencil, google office tools and communication tools like Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, voice telephone, etc.

What challenges did I meet

The supply side of the project was a struggle, as well as funding to keep the project going. I was, and still am, of the opinion that people need to be rewarded for their efforts, and in this project, I see the councillors receiving payment for their services, as well as training and support. I believe the service needs to be offered for free, as to reach the people who really need it, so some kind of financing mechanism needs to be created. Finding councillors wasn't a problem, and I don't expect problems there for this project. Maintaining quality control especially is an issue which I anticipate and have solutions for.

The challenges I encountered were lack of trust from the very people who were supposed to benefit from the service offered. The other challenge was finding a business model that would keep everything going (I was never looking for profits, and am not with this project).

What am I proud of achieving

I managed to complete a couple of full sessions with the project in Peru, and I am proud of what we achieve there, and the feedback we got from it. I believe there is a market, but am not sure how to finance the enterprise (I still haven't found a good business model for it). We managed to get three people (out of 50 initial participants) up to the level where they were starting their own businesses (mainly to do with food production and sales).

What have I learnt building it

My main lessons are that there were initial barriers that needed to be overcome. This is mainly to do with reputation and having materials ready to be used whenever you get an opening to present the product / service. The other lesson was that in order to scale, you really need to have a working business (or sustainability) model, so you can ask for funding or support from the relevant partners. I am thinking this would be ministries of health for the geographies where I am thinking to roll out this particular idea. Social skills and networks are also relevant, even though networks can be built, social skills are a must for scaling the idea.

What's next for Mental Health support during Covid-19 pandemic

In order to implement this idea, I am looking for a team to initially implement this idea in South America, both Portuguese speaking Brazil and the Spanish speaking rest of South America. Initially, this would mean finding and selecting the appropriate councillor candidates (language skills, listening skills) and having a mechanism to communicate the service to possible "clients". We need to create a screening process for both the "clients" and the councillors, as well as checklists and evaluation forms for the counselling sessions. We need forms and guidance for the evaluations done by the councillors and the "clients".

We obviously want to automate the above mentioned paperwork, using a smartphone application and accompanying website. Initially, however for a prototype, I am just looking at doing the paperwork and business analysis. Therefore I would need people with the appropriate skills: psychology, mental health, procedures, marketing and communication skills, as well as business development and financial / sales expertise to help me out with a paper prototype. I would like to use Design Thinking to create an initial prototype, which would then feed into an application design stage.

Built With

• designthinking
• paper
• people-network
• prototype