Spandana Health Care rolls out free mental health helpline

BENGALURU: Bengaluru-based Spandana Health Care has launched a mental health

crisis

response platform

TeleArogya

Helpie, which also doubles up a free suicide prevention helpline, leveraging AI to support affected

individuals

through a four-pronged virtual support network -- Helpie Bot, Helpie BRIC (

Basic Resources

for Individuals in Crisis), Helpie Ring and Helpie Responder.


TeleArogya's Helpie crisis response platform is a joint effort between Spandana Health Care, Augmenta Health and Chirayu Tech India.

The pandemic has underscored the need for unbiased crisis response chat support to those who are going through challenging times dealing with trauma, anxiety or depression each day.

TeleArogya’s platform is geared up to support affected individuals to be safe and stay connected to their social support system through the platform.

At the heart of TeleArogya's technology is Helpie’s chabot-enabled crisis response platform that provides affected individuals a non-intrusive psychological support mechanism equipping them to access resources to cope up with the crisis effectively.
This is done through a combination of guided interventions – AI chatbot and expertise of mental health professionals and trained volunteers.

Helpie’s Basic Resources for Individuals in Crisis' (BRIC) is a self-guided content curated to assist individuals by addressing their concerns through acceptance, identification and nudging them to seek professional help.

Helpie Ring provides a safety net to assist individuals experiencing suicidal thoughts and create a close-knit support system consisting of close family members and friends .

“We launched Helpie during the pandemic to provide a first-order intervention, palliative, non-intrusive psychological support in helping them handle the imminent crisis. The crisis response platform is assisted by trained volunteer crisis interventionists (Helpie responders) and referral for second-order intervention by competent mental health professionals to guide those affected individuals,” said Dr Mahesh Gowda, founder and director of Spandana Health Care.

Though Gowda and team had attempted a similar platform early on, it did run into teething trouble initially. “The latest effort is to build a robust platform powered by an AI interface to address concerns in an effective way. Helpie Responders, for instance, are a team of volunteer (crisis interventionists trained to aid individuals in mental health crises by providing safe, non-judgmental and confidential support through call or chat. The volunteers support and guide callers during emotional crises,” he said. These volunteers go through a six-month extensive training before they handle live chat support and calls.

TeleArogya Helpie is a free missed call psychological counselling platform with multilingual live chat support that anonymises caller details and maintains confidentiality. Those affected can give a missed call to 080-45901234 to avail the free service and also use the chat support on TeleArogya's website.