By Prukalpa Sankar:
According to a 2011 WHO study, India is the most depressed nation in the world. According to the Indian Government’s estimates, more than 70 million people are suffering from mental health related issues. Since 2001, more than 10,00,00 people have committed suicide due to mental illnesses in India.
Yet, India spends less than 0.6% of its healthcare budget on Mental Health and has 1 psychiatrist for every 343,000 people. In comparison, US has 1 psychiatrist for every 12,837 people. There are only 3,500 trained psychiatrists and even fewer psychologists in India.
At SocialCops, our mission is to solve the world’s most pressing problems using data. On the World Mental Health Day, we are taking one more tiny step towards our mission.
Today, we’re announcing a partnership with The Live Love Laugh Foundation, the non-profit founded by Deepika Padukone to focus on mental health to open data about mental healthcare professionals and institutions in India – so people who need help can find it, at the click of a button.
In India today, if one is depressed and is looking for help -it’s almost impossible to find help. There is a stigma associated with seeking “medical help” – and those who overcome these challenges and want to seek help are presented with yet another problem. India doesn’t have a comprehensive database of psychiatrists, psychologists, counsellors and therapists because they are not registered medical practitioners!
A simple searchable interface and map, a mental health seeker just needs to type in their location and the map around them will get populated with therapists around them. At SocialCops, this is a small step towards leveraging our open data platform to help solve problems that matter.