So, let’s move back to the year 2019, June

Aanya was surfing the internet, how to deal with work pressure & stress at work etc., switching over from one blog to another website, checking diet charts. It was becoming laborious for her because she wasn’t able to find everything in one place. A week later, Aanya is exercising with some sense of satisfaction & a good mood. But then, she is finding it difficult to continue for long because she couldn’t figure out how to track her health & there was no support as well. She drops the idea of exercising. And slowly starts getting sleep issues. She is not willing to eat anything, losing weight & growing weaker. There is heaviness in the head most of the time when she is tensed about her work.

Flashback - the year 2018 December.

Hectic life at her office

Working all day long, on the same thing at the same workplace, not finding time to look after her health & herself, Aanya is physically & mentally unwell - not able to move out, not able to do any recreational activity, no interactions, no motivation to exercise or anything, not able to perform well at work as well. To reach office on time, to meet loved ones' wishes, late-night office work, lack of consistent, quality sleep, job insecurity, business planning, financial insecurity, premiums payments on time, too much travelling and overthinking was the major concerns for her stress & unhappiness.

Fast forward to September 2020

Lockdown & COVID

Loneliness (an epidemic in modern society), emptiness & void, Aanya was not able to interact with anybody, always looking at the 4 people around her or working, not able to go out, stressed & anxious.

More issues come her way!

Aanya has no way to stay motivated with like-minded people trying to cope up with similar issues. Aanya starts using Insta, FB more to find like-minded people, but rather adds more stress & unhappiness to her life, seeing old pictures of fun posted by people on Social Media platforms. That feeling of Emptiness. Sadness, Melancholy, Boredom, Confusion. It was a little of everything. Aanya is losing touch with herself, thinks of considering therapy but couldn’t because of that taboo in India. Wanted an online solution for the same, looked for other online health platforms. But couldn’t get to know a doctor with the preferred qualifications in her own area & couldn’t connect with them.

Doctor Rahul (psychiatrist) of age 32. Had his centre on the ground floor of his house. His father had gone through a period of depression & so he chose psychiatry as a career. He wanted to help society by providing solutions for mental health issues people used to face. But when he started working, he was surprised to see that even though the country had a large population going through some kind of mental health issue, still he wasn’t receiving many patients. On research & analysis, he figured out that there is a staggering treatment gap for all mental health disorders in India: with only 10% of patients in the country getting treated. Social stigma is a factor because of which people hesitate to approach a psychiatrist. Online, people can directly communicate with experts from home. And once the COVID hits, Rahul sees a drastic decline in the number of patients reaching his place, because people had started travelling less. Along with that, the COVID period brought a financial crisis to a lot of families, & they wanted to save as much money as they could, which was another reason they didn’t want to visit the centres. The public attitude towards psychiatric medication also had an overall negative inclination, many people held the opinion that psychiatric medications were harmful to the body and impacted everyday activities due to which psychiatrists are the last people to get referred to for mental health problems in India.

Rahul adapts to the crisis by setting up teleconsultation for patients, & believed that increasing awareness about mental health and integration of psychiatric care into the primary health care setup are two important steps that could reduce stigmatisation.

On his own, even though there was a slight increase in the number of help-seekers, he still couldn’t manage to get the needy. That would have required a lot of campaigning, advertising & marketing, which other than just involving large sums of money, also demanded a lot of time & that too continuously. He switched to the existing platforms like Practo from where he could get some but doctors were unhappy with this platform for not updating their profiles. He also would have preferred a platform where he is getting preliminary reports so that the process of treating patients gets faster because time would not have to be invested much in asking questions to the patient, rather the most important ones relevant to the situation would be asked.

Aanya’s friend suggested this app Walnut to her. A platform to stay motivated with like-minded people with regular health updates of her close ones whom she might be concerned about trying to cope up with similar issues. Considering therapy online helps in empowering you to make your own decisions about how to implement positive changes. She could find Counsellors, Dietitians, Psychologists & more health specialists all in one place. She could track health through AI monitoring as well - sleep, eating habits etc. She could also find Health tips & feed in one place. For the doctors, Walnut provides Digital Marketing. Rahul’s client suggested to him Walnut where consultation services were very economical with their own profiles to increase their visibility. Data of patients through AI could be received i.e. patient history, thus assisting mental health experts by providing them with the preliminary reports of patients.

Download the app now: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.walnut.walnut_app

Gaurav Panwar

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