NL Corresspondent
Jammu Tawi: While the pandemic has been an eye-opener for many of us, exposing various and serious underlying mental health disorders, which are often left unnoticed among people of all age brackets alive. In an endeavour to bridge the demand gap between individuals and mental health professionals, a new online platform named – happifyu.com was launched recently.
Happifyu is a brain child of co-founders Divya Shah and Alok Saxena along with their partners Rajneesh Singh and Dr. Satnam Singh Deol. During the launch event a panel discussion was conducted to spread awareness on impact of mental health on individuals, homes and workplaces.
The panellists included Dr Nimesh G Desai, Former Director, Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences, Delhi; Ms. Subha Chanrdrashekhar, Special Educator and Psychologist; Ms. Sonya Philip, Founder of Learning Matters; Ashish Goyal, Business Group Lead of Accenture; and Rajeev Mall, Vice President of Mondelez International.
Speaking about the inception and need for this platform, Ms Divya Shah said” The journey commenced in July 2020 as a small WhatsApp group to connect people during the covid19 lockdown. This small attempt helped people unwind, open, and talk about their emotional state, share their stories and helped build a community which supported each other during those testing times. Soon more people started to join from various parts of India and even abroad and helped us to shape it as an online radio channel ‘Radio diva' solely dedicated to the cause.”
But after second wave and the grievances it brought forth, Radio Diva started conducting awareness sessions with counsellors and mental health experts to support people in issues of grief such as that of losing a loved one, anxiety of losing jobs and loneliness amongst all age groups.
“As the community grew, we also started getting requests for expert consults, we felt the need to convert it into an online platform to make it easier for everyone seeking help and to provide a faster way to connect to the experts; this laid the foundation for a need of a holistic platform and that was how happifyu.com was curated,” added Alok Saxena.
The team at Happifyu.com envisions to help individuals and organisations by conducting awareness and training programs, scientific assessment and evaluations on stress, anxiety, depression and various other issues that have an impact on organisations, individuals and the environment at home and workplaces. They offer a spectrum of therapists, clinical psychologists including hypnotherapists, coaches and mentors to assist individuals as well as organisations that are committed to provide for the over-all well-being of their workforce.
Talking at the launch, Rajeev Mall and Ashish Goyal shared the corporate perspective and said that there is a heightened awareness amongst organisations post the pandemic to create better workplaces for their teams. They added that organisations are actively taking steps on programs of mental health at workplaces.
Subha Chandrasekhar and Sonya Philip shared their experience on working with mental health for children and how home environment affects their growth.
Dr Nimesh pointed out that the stigma deters 80% of those affected from mental health to go to an expert on time. He emphasised that any changes in the behaviour leading to anger or sadness, any kind of suicidal thoughts are some alarming early signs and one must consult an expert.
