Humraaz: Pakistan govt’s attempt at providing mental health assistance - The Express Tribune

The government recently launched a mental health assistance application for people, which provides basic help to those in need for free.

Though mediocrely designed, the application helps navigate users to how they are feeling in the moment and helps explore what they might be experiencing and what assistance they might require.

Users can select from a long list of options regarding their current feelings and emotional state and are then prompted to select the severity level of those feelings to measure, as best as it can, the acuteness of the symptoms. Humraaz automatically provides a possible diagnosis with just two questions, with advice on how to deal with it.

The platform provides immediate help, by automatically dialing the hotline number for assistance or helping you look for a psychologist, while also providing calming material like generic mental health articles to read through, along with videos and a group text to talk out what's bothering you.

The calming material include numbered articles written about stress or homicide and how to recognize and deal with it. Videos only have a limited option of one or two videos that direct users to a YouTube video of a doctor talking about your diagnosed issue. The Humraaz group chat displays several number of people online, but has a glitch where texts don't get sent or appear on the chat screen.

Though the idea behind Humraaz is thoughtful and an essential requirement for Pakistanis today, the execution of the application has failed to meet the standards that such platforms require.

Search for psychologists in the vicinity has not had data added and fails to provide information on psychologists users could book for an appointment. Users are also expected to sign in with either their phone number, CNIC, or email address, thus anonymity is not maintained within the application.

While Humraaz marks an important milestone by the government yo offer services for those suffering from mental health issues, the application could be improved and developed more skillfully to provide a better and more helpful experience.