Previously submitted to: Interactive Journal of Medical Research (no longer under consideration since Jun 26, 2023)
Date Submitted: Dec 12, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Digital Solutions for Mental Health Awareness and Support in Pakistan: Perspectives from a Non-Profit Organization
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a global health crisis in 2020; millions of deaths and economic paralysis, further compounded by physical/social distancing measures and fear of the virus, resulting in potential long-term adverse effects on the mental health of entire populations around the world. As a result of the pandemic, attention toward mental health concerns, and demand for mental health services have increased in low-resource settings. The already lacking mental healthcare infrastructure of Pakistan was further exposed during the peak of the pandemic, particularly in terms of the dearth of qualified professionals, and access to them. During these unprecedented times, digital solutions to mental health services became significant. This paper presents perspectives from a non-profit organization in Karachi Pakistan in setting up a digital health initiative pertaining to mental healthcare service delivery, public awareness, and policy-level advocacy.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.