Smart Psych

We at Psych Friends are willing to reduce the increasing number of people with depression through our mobile application Smart Psych an other services. According to the WHO, more than 6% of people in the world are having depression or at least have experienced depression once in their life, more than 29% of people in the MENA region are suffering from depression and about 35% are always feeling stressed. According to save.org, There is one suicide death in the US every 11.5 minutes and according to the WHO on, one person dies every 40 seconds because of suicide globally. Many factors are contributing to this problem in our community such as the social stigma that makes patients with depression feel embarrassed about their mental health illness thus they ignore their depression and don't treat it because of the social taboos they care about and this is affected too by the trust issues that people are facing when it comes to talking about their mental wounds and problems. Moreover, wars and crises have made the problem worse than before as they caused people many scars and traumas; these affected people in diaspora communities are facing problems of language and culture while in therapy, so sometimes they become unable to find a suitable psychologist that can understand their kind of suffrage.Consequently, this problem is affecting people's productivity in all life sectors. Studies have shown that 1 in 4 workers have quit their jobs over mental health, and about 37% of workers claimed that anxiety and lack of motivation that are caused by depression are making work harder. Additionally, more than 75% of people in low- and middle-income countries receive no treatment (WHO 2021), with Smart Psych we hope to help these kinds of people who can't afford to pay for their treatment, as we offer many free features and the other paid ones are very affordable

Through our advanced AI technology, machine learning, and data analysis, we in "Psych Friends" will provide our first mobile application, Smart Psych, which has many automated features aiming to provide a mobile application that can detect the early symptoms of depression in order to solve the problem of the increasing number of depression cases. through it, we will protect people from depression by reducing the prevalence of early depression and treating people who already have depression. our AI-advanced techniques can detect the early symptoms of depression when treatment is easy and possible. Also, we offer easy and private access with fully automated services that ensure high privacy for the users, and this will help us to achieve more compliance and commitment in the treatment journey. Moreover, we have our tracking techniques such as energy, mood eating, and movements tracking and other features like sentimental analysis and voice and wave recognition that help us follow up with users to make sure they are consistent with their medication and behavioral treatment in a way that respects the users' privacy.

we are aiming to help refugees around the world especially those issued from the conflict in the MENA region as we offer software technology that serves anyone anywhere in the world, and we hope we can help people in the MENA region especially those who have endured wars and displacement and are poor enough to be not able to afford for depression therapy; as our services are 10 times cheaper than most of the available therapy methods and anyone can access it. Also, we will serve those who seek more privacy as we offer fully automated mental health-AI technology. Regarding refugees around the world, We will be offering our services in more than one language to break the language barrier that makes an obstacle for people in the diaspora. One of our plans is to establish Psych Friends community for people who use our system including those who suffered or recovered from depression and those who are protection seekers to share their experiences; this community will build solidarity and feeling of empathy among depression patients so they feel that they are not alone. through Smart Psych we want to ensure equality in the accessibility to mental health services in an affordable price and sometimes for free for everyone despite their financial status.

Our Psych Friends team consists of Mohammad Badia Alfathi and me, Mariam Alboushi. Mohammad is a software engineer specialized in artificial intelligence, he's pursuing now a master's degree in machine learning, and he has a good reputation in this field. Mohammad had volunteered with Relief International and Care International, and also has a membership in the International Mental Health Conference that is held in Turkey. He had experienced many depression cases and he knows very well how to deal with themMeme, I'm pursuing a bachelor's degree in pharmacy, learned about the clinical treatment of depression as and I have applied this information while I was volunteering with MAPS and Save The Children were we helped people and support them in their recovery journey. Both Mohammad and I originated from Syria and both belong to the MENA region, so we know very well how people are suffering here and we can understand their feelings and mental health problem as both of us have endured tough circumstances like displacement and wars like most of the people in our region

we are testing it on a sample population which is about 200 person,  in our first stages we are aiming to serve at least 1000 and 4 refugee camps especially in the MENA region.

We have some cultural barriers related to the social stigma of mental health illness we hope Solve can help us break this barrier by introducing us to the refugees they have access to. Also, we have some financial barriers related to covering the fees of the APIs we are going to implement in the application and other fees.

Our solution is innovative as we use advanced AI techniques and features and we will provide all these services in one single application at an affordable cost. To illustrate, we offer Sleep and food tracking feature that helps in monitoring users' mental health and other features like voice tracking, voice recognition, and sentimental analysis. To take into consideration, All of these features respect the privacy terms of the user.

we are aiming to get 5 cooperations and sponsorship from several organizations to introduce our solution in 4 refugee camps that are provided with the required network and reach about 1000+ users online and connect them with our psychiatrists to ensure the follow-up process in order to be in direct contact with people to develop the app in a way that suits their actual psychological needs. On the other hand, after one year we will be able to Collect Psychological data related to depression in order to achieve more accuracy in diagnosis.

by 2024 we will be testing our product on 500 refugee in turkiey in order to see how is this impactful.

I think ur solution will have an impact on the problem because the thing is worsened the problem of depression is the social stigma we're working to break it by using automated services, also we're solving the problem of language and the expensive fees of therapy. According to the WHO, more than 75% of people in low- and middle-income countries receive no treatment. so by providing such product all these kind of people will be benefiting from it.

AI techniques, Machine learning, and data analysis

from the early beginning, we started this project we started with a new style of management in which decision-making and all other details are not restricted to one person. a passionate woman and man who believe in each other power were the Psych Friends team where we work in a friendly workplace, as we both are the leader and we both cook the creative ideas to take Psych Friends to the next level. and regarding the co-workers working with us, we always involve them in the decision-making as we really need their suggestions and creative ideas. Moreover, every one of this team is found in a different country in order to cover more populations.

Our business model is freemium, as we are going to provide our customers with a mobile application that will protect them from depression, diagnose depression in its early stages and treat the existing cases of depression with our advanced, accessible, and private AI-follow up techniques such as sleep, weight, movements, and voice tracking. Also, we offer sentimental analysis services and voice recognition for the user to ensure accurate protection, diagnosis, and treatment. some of these features are free others are paid for an affordable price that suits people in the MENA region.

our path to financial sustainability is a combination of several paths, as we want to bring sustained donations and grants and sell some of our services to individuals and organizations. Also we are open to work with volunteers from the same populations that want to help people and have the same values as us.

We won the second prize in the Shabake Switchboard Hackathon and they offer us 3000$ grant that we are using sustainably to perform all the tasks needed to launch Smart Psych; instead of hiring someone to do a certain task we tried to pay for some courses inorder to learn the needed skills and use them by ourselves. Moreover, we are planning to make income-generating services within the same app