SURABAYA, Indonesia: In 2015, IT engineer Audrey Maximilian Herli was enrolled in Surabaya, one of Indonesia’s best universities, when he learned that a near female friend had been silently dealing with numerous individual issues and hardships.
Mr. Herli’s friend cried out in desperation for help on social media, but she was ignored as an attention seeker and bullied by her peers and obscure online commenters, which just made her depressed.
To Mr. Herli’s despair, his colleague turned to self-harm to deal with the onslaught of feelings she experienced.
He spent a lot of time considering how to assist her companion, but he quickly realized that people with mental health issues frequently experienced prejudice and stigma in Indonesia.
This, according to Mr. Herli, helped to partially explain why his companion had not sought medical attention, adding that she has since recovered.
The 30-year-old told CNA that” people with mental health issues need to have access to experts who can turn their concern into something good without worry of being preached, judged, mocked or having their secrets revealed.”
It is one of the reasons he co-founded Riliv, a mental health program that has appeared in Indonesia in recent years, including Bicarakan, in 2015. Psikologimu in 2020 and ID in 2019.
The three companies have provided access to mental health professionals to hundreds of thousands of Indonesians, including those who live in remote areas where the closest therapist may be lots of kilometers away.
By offering online sessions and other mental health services, the creators of these three systems, which include user-friendly apps and websites, & nbsp, stated to CNA that they thought technology could address both Indonesia’s lack of mental health professionals and low level of awareness.
Riliv is a play on how to pronounce the word” relief” in Indonesian. Bicarakan means” talk about it ,” while Psikologimu is” your psychology.”
Bicarakan was likewise guided by a personal encounter. Andreas Handini, the father of nbsp, to set up his system.
For years, hewas struggling to cope with a series of childhood trauma which manifested themselves as nightmares and a sense of bitterness towards the world around him.
But after six months of treatment in 2019, he was finally able to restrain his thoughts.
Mr. Handini, 25, told CNA,” I privately felt the benefits of seeing a counselor, and I was determined to inspire others to do the same.”