Tunza App

Tunza App is a mobile application that provides mental health awareness and help by connecting users with mental health experts whilst providing user focus groups for more engagement and learning forums

A study conducted in 2019 by the Kenya Mental Health taskforce indicated that Kenya has a high burden of mental illness due to ill health, psychosocial disability and premature mortality with huge gaps in access to care with an estimated 1 in every 10 people reported to be suffering from a common mental disorder. The number increases to one in every four (20-25%) people among patients attending routine outpatient services. The World Health Organization in a 2017 report on mental health situation ranked Kenya fifth within Africa with the highest number of depression cases. In addition, the World Population Review placed Kenya at 114 of 175 countries with escalated suicidal rates .

However even with such high numbers, mental health wellness and awareness is not emphasized on as thoroughly as it ought to be. Research conducted by the World Federation for Mental Health revealed that 75% -95% of people with mental health conditions in low and middle class countries have no access to the right care. These conditions are further worsened by the fact that mental health especially by Kenyans is rarely a topic of conversation due to the stigma attached to it.   As a result, most Kenyans end up never getting any professional help as a majority of them associate mental health and mental illness with negative narratives leading to low focus on the importance and benefits of mental health and wellbeing.

A study on the effect of stigma towards mental illness in Kenya conducted in 2007 revealed that associated stigma has a negative impact on a community’s mental health seeking behavior. Particularly, stigma was found to lead to delayed treatment seeking thus leasing to increased morbidity and mortality. The associated stigma is widespread in Kenya especially within rural and semi-urban Kenya, which accounts for over 70% of the Kenyan population.

There is a need to create solutions that enable Kenyans to openly seek and access the required help they require without the associated guilt and stigma.

Tunza App is a mobile application that connects users with mental health experts allowing for them to freely and easily converse with therapists whilst having public forums for engagement for users to have open discussions with other users. The app also incorporates a learning segment within which users get to learn of various illnesses. To allow for more Kenyans to receive the support they might require, Tunza App can be accessed through a mobile application available for both Android and IOS users, as well as via USSD for users who may not have access to the internet.

On sign up, the users are prompted to answer a questionnaire to provide data about them. This data is fed into a machine learning model and the results of the model inform users of available therapists who match their need and the type of groups available for the user to engage in.

The app has various features :The Chat feature enables users to connect directly with therapists and provides various options of communication including video, call or direct message. The Community feature groups users, into different focus groups whereby users can engage to provide group support to each other. The content shared is pre-screened and flags any offensive content from being distributed in order to provide a safe space for discussion. In addition, the app offers a Flag feature, in which users who abuse community guidelines may be flagged by other users. 

The Learning feature provides a pool of learning resources on various mental health illnesses providing the users of the app an opportunity to learn and understand the causes, triggers, symptoms and treatment of various conditions.

The non-sensitive user data collected from Tunza App will be reported to the Ministry of Health (MOH) through Digital Health Data Pipelines to provide the MOH for monitoring.   

Tunza App is for everyone, anyone who might have a need to seek psychological help without feeling the guilt of attending therapy or the fear of being stigmatized about the same. It is however tied to those with access to a mobile device of whatever kind. Users with a mobile device without internet connectivity can also access the solution though with limited resources.

As the solution is still in ideation stage, the current team is limited in terms of numbers and skills, being that i am working on it single handedly.

I am an intermediate Flutter developer, having worked on several school projects based on Flutter, the technology that is the backbone of the technology used for the Tunza application. 

In addition , i am a current senior pursuing a bachelors degree in Telecommunication Engineering, as such, I would also be responsible for the networking and hosting needs of the organization.

In future , there will be need for the following roles:

1) Data Scientist -Responsible for collecting data, cleaning , feature engineer and build machine learning models on the data to curate recommender systems that will help match users with available mental health experts both local and international who specialize on their need

2) App developer- seeing that Tunza could be available for both offline users(based on the USSD) and online ones running on both Android and iOS, there is need to get even more developers to build the app on the mentioned platforms

3) Business Development Manager - Tunza will require a business development manager responsible for marketing Tunza App and driving more users to download the app by advertising to relevant user groups using various media.

To better understand the needs of the population, I consulted 2 therapists , one based at the Mathari Mental Health Hospital -Kenya's only public referral hospital for the mentally ill, another running a private clinic within Nairobi. I have also volunteered for an mental health awareness organization- Kijana Jasiri(translating to Brave Youth), the time during which it became apparent there was a real need to create a solution for people , especially the youth to easily access mental health resources and experts without the stigma and guilt associated with it.

Tunza App's innovativeness comes in as it provides a solution to a mental health crisis currently being experienced in the country while still understanding how sensitive mental health conversations are within the community. It provides a Kenyan solution to a general problem with Kenyan specific concerns.

In addition, incorporating learning resources on Tunza App, will provide awareness to users of mental health conditions and how best to deal with the condition.

Within the first year, Tunza App aims at:

• 2000 downloads in the first year with at least 70% users actively engaged in using the app
• 10% increase in Tunza App users seeking further mental health

Tunza App uses Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning to match users with therapists based off the data they provide on a questionnaire the users fill on sign up. To do so, a classifying model is built from available mental health data such as that provided by Soteria and the CDC. Various tags are provided during building of the models, the tags being representative of various mental health conditions. Once the user submits their data from the questionnaire the model classifies the data into the various tags which informs the available therapists the user can select and connect with as well as available groups they can contribute to.

In addition Tunza App is based on a mobile application that is built on Flutter and SQLite database powered by AWS Cloud.

In the next year, we hope to launch Tunza and have it serve at least 2000 Kenyans living across the country through direct downloads and use of the app.

In addition, we hope to grow our pool of mental health experts, that way reducing the patient to doctor ratio to at most a 10 patients to 1 doctor ratio.

Cultural barriers- currently, Kenyans experience stigma and guilt in seeking psychological help, hence the reception of the app may not be as forthcoming as would be optimal. However, creating conversations with experts as well as Kenyans around the need to seek help could provide the encouragement to use the application

Technological concerns- Issues pertaining security, anonymity and collection of sensitive data could cause hesitance to adopting the application