MIT Solve

Solution Overview

Solution Name

Geno App

One-line solution summary.

Geno app provides university students in distress with timely and confidential access to peer and professional support.

Elevator pitch

What is your solution?

The term Geno is a Kenyan Luo dialect word meaning hope. We seek to bring hope to the thousands of University students in our former campuses who are going through distress and have no access to youth-friendly services.

Geno App is a mental health healthcare app that is accessible on Playstore to anyone with an Android device. It seeks to bridge the gap in mental health treatment by easing the process of finding professional help. Professional services provided include psychiatric consultation, counselling sessions (peer-to-peer and professional therapy), psychoeducation, and crisis intervention which includes, suicide prevention and emotional, and psychological first aid.

The app also connects users with preventive and supportive services to enable them to continue with their studies without interruption.

What specific problem are you trying to solve?

Globally, it is estimated that 15–24-year-olds account for 2-25% of the total burden of mental illness (Patel et al., 2007) which covers college and university students. According to World Health Organization 2020, the youth are reported to commonly experience depression, anxiety, psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, alcohol and substance dependence, and suicide.

Approximately 75% of all lifetimes mental disorders have their onsets before the age of 24, and these early-onset cases are related to poorer clinical and functional outcomes than later-onset cases. Additionally, the college years are associated with a significant increase in risky health behaviors, such as excessive alcohol and cannabis use, and suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students. Even though effective treatments exist to address these debilitating issues, only a minority of students with mental disorders obtain treatment.

In LMICs like Kenya, mental health care is inadequate, inefficient, and inequitable. Low budgetary allocation and failure to integrate mental health care into primary health care have led to more than 85% of the treatment gap. Not to mention that Kenya has less than 500 specialist mental health workers to serve its population of over 50 million. Additional constraints to mental health care provision in Kenya include lack of adequate financing, poor health infrastructure, limited therapeutic resources, and socio-cultural stigma.

Who does your solution serve? In what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Globally, 80% of the people living with mental health conditions reside in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Despite the gravity of this burden, only 12.5% of mental health service providers target the youth globally. Moreover, the mental health burden is more amplified for marginalized youth in LMICs because of the socio-economic impacts of Covid, recurrent unrest in universities leading to closure and interruption of studies, and poverty and unemployment.

Students living with mental health conditions may have genetic factors that interact with environmental factors at the university, such as academic load and demands, financial support, social interaction with peers and lecturers, and even traumatic experiences such as bullying.

University students with a higher proportion of mental distress are likely to experience negative consequences such as significantly impaired cognitive functioning, learning disabilities, poor academic performance, and substance abuse.

Geno App serves at-risk and affected university students who have mental conditions who are unable to access help. Since mental health hasn't been fully embraced in our communities, the majority suffer in silence due to the fear of being misunderstood and stigmatized that comes with it and also the services are expensive.

The App allows these students to connect with different medical professionals (psychiatrists and therapists) confidentially, affordably and easily through their phones at the comfort of their rooms. They also get to interact with those who have lived experiences on mental health and have gotten help through the App for social support.

What steps have you taken to understand the needs of the population you want to serve?

We understand potential users from our own first hand experience as students who experienced mental distress in Campus. We have gone through the challenges of access care, getting support and being stigmatized and discriminated against by fellow students and faculty due to our mental conditions.

After getting treatment and social support from PDO at different times in the last two years, we realised that we are not helpless and could do something to help alleviate the suffering of students. We create awareness in different colleges through an outreach program supported by PDO. Through this initiative, many students are reaching out for help, which motivated us to design a solution specifically targeting students in Campus.

The three of us are volunteers members of a support group affiliated to PDO and one of us, Jacinta now works for PDO as the Head Psychologist with Psychiatric Disability Organisation (PDO) that is addressing mental health issues.

For the success of our innovation, we engaged our users in the design and development of the solution during the outreach events. Additionally, being part of a support group, we engage other members who are students in colleges and universities and have mental health lived experience to get feedback on App features and how to improve the user experience.

Which aspects of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Improving healthcare access and health outcomes; and reducing and ultimately eliminating health disparities (Health)

Our solution's stage of development:

Pilot: An organization deploying a tested product, service, or business model in at least one community

Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution—in other words, what have you accomplished to date?

We are on a pilot stage of development with the app. Geno App is being piloted with university students in the following universities in Kenya where we schooled at, Pwani University, Rongo University, and Moi University. We created the Geno App in the hope of making university and college life better for the majority of students who are living with mental health conditions.

Our objectives and outcomes are as follows:

Objectives

To increase uptake of quality mental health services to students in universities
To reduce the time delay between onset of symptoms and treatment of mental health conditions
To reduce stigma related to mental health among university students

Outcomes

A community that embraces and prioritizes mental health services
Students accessing services without fear of judgment
The timely connection between mental health practitioners and students with mental health conditions.

We are still in the testing phase of the tech solution and less than 100 people have used it.

Where our solution team is headquartered or located:

Nakuru, Kenya

Team Lead:

Jacinta Maritim, is our Team lead. She is a psychologist at PDO-KENYA. She