A mobile-based system for mental health patients in Kenyan Universities.

Abstract

Mental health is a very crucial part of a person’s health, as it accounts to a person’s peace of mind. Mental includes a person’s emotions, psychological and social wellbeing. Mental health is what majorly determines how a person performs in every part of his life be it at work, at home or with his friends because logically a person can not be at his optimum productivity when he is sad / frustrated or mentally disturbed. It is very unfortunate that this crucial part of a persons health is looked down upon and not given the importance that it deserves making it very difficult for patients to get the help that they need when they need it. Some of the major difficulties that mental health patients face include discrimination and stigmatization from the society whereby these people are regarded as weak. Stigmatization and Discrimination is the main reason as to why Mental health patients refuse to see a specialists under the excuse of putting up a strong façade in the society. Other challenges that mental health patients face include lack of adequate time in the context that university students are usually busy with classes. The few mental health patients who eventually make it to see the specialist, there is no well-defined way for the psychiatrist to follow up on how the patient is doing until the next session. As clearly explained above, mental health patients face several challenges on their journey to get treatment. To solve these problems, a mobile mental health information system is proposed. The system is able to facilitate the treatment sessions between the doctor and the patient at the comfort of their home. It facilitates the exchange of prescription and the tracking of the patient’s progress. The system also comprises of a way to get the patient to reach out for immediate help in case they feel overwhelmed and want to harm themselves. The system is developed using Java and PHP as the programming language and MySQL as the database management system, it also uses firebase to send out push notifications. Laravel framework is used to develop the backend and Android studio was tool used to develop the frontend of the application. In conclusion this system is a valuable application in combating mental health illnesses effectively.