Delhi AIIMS Develops 2 Mobile Apps For Patients Dealing With Anxiety, Depression

September 14, 2021

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi has created two mobile applications for patients dealing with chronic mental illness and their caretakers. There has been a surge in the number of cases where people are dealing with various mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, especially when the whole world is under the influence of the pandemic.
The applications developed by the AIIMS have been named Shaksham and Disha respectively. The apps have been designed to deal with severe mental illness for patients suffering from chronic mental health illness and also for those who got the first episodes of such symptoms.
Mamta Sood, a senior psychiatrist at AIIMS, told news agency IANS, “We have developed two mobile apps — Shaksham and Disha — to deal with mental illness.”
She further added that the Shaksham application is for those suffering from chronic mental illness, while the other app Disha will benefit individuals who undergo the first such episode of symptoms.
Both the application have been developed in collaboration with the computer science departments of Indraprastha Institute of Technology, Delhi, and the University of Warwick, UK. The project was funded by the National Institute of Health Research, UK.
“The apps will be available for free public use from January next year. We are more concerned about the patient data to be used in the apps and once the data restoration is secured, we will launch it by January next year,” Sood added.

“The apps will also send reminder to the care givers for medicines and other requirements of the patients,” she added. When asked about the mental problems faced by people during the ongoing pandemic, Sood said that an AIIMS research conducted on healthcare workers has revealed that 50 per cent of the healthcare workforce are facing symptoms like anxiety, depression, and stress.
However, she further added that having such symptoms and having the disease are different, as symptoms do not affect the patients, while disease affects all.