UAE residents will soon have a platform to discuss their issues related to mental health – a rising health scare and a silent killer in the Middle East and globally – in absolute privacy, with the Dubai-based healthtech startup ShopDoc set to launch the ‘U OK?’ project in the metaverse.
ShopDoc, which launched the world’s first metaverse primary health venture for schools – ‘My School Clinix’ – in the UAE last month, is gearing up to unveil its new metaverse platform to exclusively deal with mental health and loneliness-related issues by November this year.
The ‘U OK?’ virtual mental health clinic will run on ShopDoc’s smart clinic platform in the UAE, with a country-wide team of reputed psychologists and psychiatrists.
“The excessive usages of mobile devices, coupled with increased human interactions in the virtual world are largely blamed for lack of intimacy in communications and personal relationships, leading to exponential hike in loneliness lately,” Shihab Makaniyil, co-founder of ShopDoc, told Arabian Business.
“If technology may be the reason for a problem, we should find the solution for it using the same technology. Hence we want to experiment with the metaverse for alleviating loneliness,” Makaniyil said.
Makaniyil said one of the key features of their metaverse happiness centre will be anonymity – where help seekers can freely engage with anonymous mental health professionals as well as fellow community members in total privacy.
“It [the U OK?’ project] will open up a whole lot of new experiences for help seekers. Besides, they can take part in various engagements and community events on the platform, which will help mitigate the loneliness issue to a great extent,” he said.
Makaniyil said they expect to launch the project for the general public by November 2022.
Globally about 33 percent of adults are estimated to be experiencing loneliness in their daily life.
Even Norway, one of the happiest nations on earth, is estimated to have over 20 percent of its population haunted by loneliness.
Makaniyil said various studies have shown that loneliness increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases by about 25 percent and stroke by 32 percent.
ShopDoc, which initially launched a mental health awareness campaign in schools and colleges in India in July last year, said the project has now become one the most popular virtual mental health clinics in Southern India.
“Running ‘U OK?’ for one year has given us crucial insights. Using all the learning we have had so far in helping thousands of people with their various mental health troubles, we have decided to narrow down our focus towards loneliness in the initial phase in the UAE market,” Razik Ashraf, co-creator of the metaverse project, told Arabian Business.
Zahid Makaniyil, chief technology officer of ShopDoc, said they will be focusing on Dubai for the initial launch of the metaverse project in the UAE because of the reason that one of the main focus areas of the city is promoting happiness.
“We want to create a community in the metaverse to recreate and spread happiness,” he said.
“We believe our services can lead to significant societal impact particularly in a country like the UAE where about 89 percent of the population is expatriates. Majority of them live far away from their immediate family members, and often isolated from social circles,” Makaniyil said.
Expatriates in the Gulf region are more at risk of experiencing loneliness and also face greater difficulty in accessing support.
Due to cultural reasons, women in this part of the world are often reluctant in seeking help for and opening up about mental health, Makaniyil said.
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