YourDOST — When we need one the most

As people around the world grapple with the pandemic, measures have been implemented to facilitate access to YourDost services from the confines of our homes. The associated links have been attached at the end of this article. Find details here: http://bitly.ws/8u2o. Please do not hesitate to seek help.

The Scholars’ Avenue got a chance to speak to the CEO of YourDOST and also an alumni of our sister institute IIT Guwahati- Ms.Richa Singh about the story of YourDOST, the vision and the success it has achieved.

What was the reason for you to start YourDOST? What is the story behind it?
Being an alumni of Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, at one point during my stay there in 2008, a wingmate of mine committed suicide. It was concluded that she was depressed about her grades and stressed about her placements even though there was enough time for the placement season. This had a deep impact on me. I realised that such a thing could happen to anybody and that we needed some guidance in this aspect. We did have counsellors in our college but due to the stigma associated with mental illness and its treatment, students hesitated in approaching the counselling center. I wanted a way to work around this and help in improving the mental health of the students.

What were the initial steps that you took to attack this issue?
The first step was to understand the problem properly. I had to understand the stigma, its effects and manifestation. So I began to do a primary research. I just spoke to the people around me and realised that the it was very common. The most common fear was that of being judged as incapable when you mention about seeking treatment for mental illness. It was also because of the lack of awareness. People just did not know what all mental health treatment tends to. They assume that it is the way it is portrayed in movies and hence believe that psychologists and counsellors are not for them. What they do not realise is that those are extreme cases and can be prevented if identified at a very early stage. It is just like any other disease.
The other issue was the unavailability of support at all times. Most families these days are nuclear and children do not have the support that a grandparent could give. I decided to address this issue in even in my BTP. During a secondary research conducted along with Mr Puneet Manuja (co-founder) I realised from the data that a lot of people felt more tensed in the middle of the night when no one is available for them. This time the people were mostly people I did not know, unlike the first time, which made me realise that it is a very genuine problem.

After identifying these problems when did you decide that such a platform was necessary?
We started speaking to counsellors and psychologists all over the country to understand how they deal with all this. This perception that mental sickness is rare and extreme needs to be changed. Stage fear, feeling of being unorganised, boredom, procrastination, relationship issues are very common issues that burden all of us. It is not wrong to ask for help when help can make you feel better. These feelings are only natural and can creep up anytime, especially when alone. The need for a 24/7 service led us to create this platform and it was also effective in mitigating the hesitation that people have in visiting a counsellor for now help is at their fingertips. The platform was formally launched in 2014.

How successful have you been in helping students and as a company?
Through the platform around two thousand conversations take place every day and we have served around 13lakh people. This is when we realized that that a lot of our users were students and hence we began tying up with universities and institutes.
We have a blog on the website with a lot of success stories published on it. One of our users, who is also a student was hopeless when he reached out to us on the platform. The counsellor started with understanding his history. There was a change in his sleep pattern and in his eating habits when he had joined his university. Soon he had began to isolate himself and avoid other groups for small reasons like being caught up in a game or in movies and every soon he did not have a group to fall back on for emotional needs. He had a lot of backlogs in his academics and had lost his self-confidence.
Counselling helped him identify that there was a time of day when he was very productive but when he’d spend doing other things. The continuous follow-ups and the right motivation in the form of small exercises restored his faith in himself. A rapport was formed between him and the counsellor and slowly he started interacting with his friends again when all the misconceptions were pointed out by the counsellor. In the next semester he cleared most of his backlog subjects. This approach is called as cognitive behaviour therapy.
When people are confused, overwhelmed and sad or when they want to improve themselves, or when they want help with addictions and relationships all they need to do is ping a counsellor. YourDOST is not just limited to students, anyone of any age group can access it.

Does YourDOST also offer offline services?
We do based on the requirements of the institute. We conduct workshops in IIT Madras at regular intervals. We also provided them with three offline counsellors over the four that they already had. We conduct booster sessions in batches of 50 and follow up with the students of each batch regarding the progress. Workshops are sometimes even conducted for teachers and the non-teaching staff. In some institutes we take part in their fresher’s orientation to talk to the parents regarding their expectations of their children living in residential campuses. We address the need for people to be sensitive to handle students who approach them with such problems so that they can be solved before they get too serious.
The challenges in solving these issues are primarily in dealing with the misconceptions in our society. We need to stress on the science of mental health treatment and remove the stigma.

Attached below is a step-wise guide to register with them for your guidance.

1. Visit www.yourdost.com

2. Sign up. This will be quick & easy
Important! — You must signup using your college network. Once that’s done you can use YourDOST from any network.

3. After signing up, go to the dashboard

4. That’s all! You can start chatting with a YourDOST Expert.

The Scholars’ Avenue thanks YourDOST and Ms.Richa Singh for this interview. We appeal to the entire student community to take advantage of such a well-thought and supportive platform. Do your bit in removing the stigma associated with mental health treatment. You may just save your friend.

To connect to an expert right now, you can click the following link :

[Remote] Online Chat Counselling: bit.ly/IITKGP-YourDOST_Chats

[Remote] Booking an appointment for telephonic/video sessions: bit.ly/IITKGP-YourDOST_Appointments

[KGP Network] https://yourdost.com/talkItOut