EA - Kaya Guides- Marginal Funding for Tech-Enabled Mental Health in LMICs by RachelAbbott

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Kaya Guides- Marginal Funding for Tech-Enabled Mental Health in LMICs, published by RachelAbbott on November 26, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.This post was written by Rachel Abbott, Kaya Guides' founder.TLDRWho we are: Kaya Guides is a global mental health charity incubated by Charity Entrepreneurship. We operate a self-help program on WhatsApp to reduce depression at scale in LMICs, focusing on youth with moderate to severe depressionStatus: We launched in India this year and are running an ongoing proof of concept with 111 peopleHow it works: A WhatsApp chatbot delivers videos in Hindi that teach participants evidence-based techniques to reduce depression. Participants practice the techniques day-to-day and have a 15-minute weekly call with a trained supporter for 5-8 weeksEvidence base: Self-help combined with low-touch human support can have the same effects as face-to-face psychotherapy in reducing depression, even if total staff time is less than two hours per participantWhat we've done: This year, we adapted the World Health Organization's digital self-help program to India's context, built a WhatsApp chatbot, produced 40 videos in Hindi, and launched our ongoing proof of conceptImpact: Delivering on WhatsApp means we can reach those who need it most, at a large scale. The WHO program, studied in two RCTs, had moderate to large effects on depressionInitial findings: Mental health organizations usually struggle with recruitment, but we got 875 people to message the chatbot in 1 month (similar organizations report getting 1K users in a year), achieved a 12.69% conversion rate from initial message to appearing in a guidance call, and only spent $0.95 per acquisitionCost-effectiveness: Kaya has the potential to increase subjective well-being 30x as cost-effectively as direct cash transfers by Year 3Scaling potential: As a tech initiative, we can scale rapidly and believe we can treat 100K people in Year 52024 plans: Next year, we'll: 1) 10x our impact from this year by treating 1K youth with depression and 2) Establish the product, team and systems we need to scale rapidly from 2025 onwardWhat we need: We're raising $80K to meet our 2024 budget of $160K, having so far raised $80K from the EA Mental Health Funding CircleWhat is Kaya Guides and what do we do?Kaya Guides is a global mental health charity incubated by Charity Entrepreneurship. Our focus is on reducing depression at scale in low and middle-income countries, beginning with India. Youth with moderate to severe depression are our target group.We deliver a self-help course via WhatsApp that teaches youth evidence-based techniques to reduce depression. During the 5-8 week course, participants have 15-minute weekly calls with trained supporters and practice the techniques day-to-day.This treatment approach (self-help, plus low-touch human support) is called guided self-help. It was recommended by Charity Entrepreneurship due to its high projected cost-effectiveness. Research indicates that guided self-help has the same effects as face-to-face psychotherapy- even if human support is only 15 minutes per week, the supporter has no clinical background, and the program lasts just five weeks.Why should we care about mental health?Mental health disorders account for 5% of global disease burden and 15% of all years lived with disability. This figure is an underestimate: the Global Burden of Disease counts suicide as an injury, even though an estimated 60-98% of suicides are attributable to mental health conditions and 700,000 people die by suicide each year. Depression and anxiety alone account for 12 billion workdays lost annually. Despite the need for expanded mental healthcare, on average just 2% of government health budgets go to mental health.Scale of the problem in IndiaWe selected...