Students use app for mental health, drug abuse help

Being a university student has its own perks, in it, are highs and lows, but, rarely do the lows manifest until it is too late.

Rada, a mobile application born out of a dire situation, now helps university students facing mental health issues and suicidal thoughts. Through the app, students get help to quit drugs, get out of abusive relationships in school and helps expectant students keep their babies to term.

Nick Mathu, not his real name, is a happy user of the app. Before he came across it, he had been introduced to drugs in high school by his desk mate who abused alcohol and marijuana. Nick was wowed by alcohol and he finally gave in to the alcohol abuse.

Since high school had stringent rules that restricted alcohol consumption, then, his intake was quite low. Joining campus, Nick felt like a bibliophile entering a book store that has all the titles he has been craving to read. For Nick, it was time to drink and party without a care in the world.

“I remember going to all parties, drinking and dancing, entertaining people at the clubs, and that, then, was a good life for me. It was all I wanted,” he tells HealthyNation.

That happened for two years of his campus life. “Alcohol wasted me,” he says. The 26-year-old was at the brink of repeating his first year. He was introduced to other drugs, including bhang. “I remember laughing hysterically for hours. I thought my laughter was entertaining people so, the more I laughed, the more I felt accomplished, and it was a drug effect,” he says.

His health deteriorated. He was thin as a rake. “My parents noticed and I stopped going home because I knew it was the alcohol and I never used to eat. They would be disappointed in me,” he recalls.

HAPPENS ANONYMOUSLY

In 2019, when the Rada app was launched, he was one of the first users. His life changed so much that his classmates trusted him to be a new class representative, he later graduated and is trying not to go back to his old ways.

A total of 1,000 downloads later, many lives have been changed at the University of Nairobi and the app developers are branching out to other universities. The idea, led by Prof Walter Jaoko, is coordinated by Lisbeth Kageni who works at the university. This was backed by Unesco, the Health ministry, National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse, UoN’s Centre for HIV prevention and Research among others. “We wanted a platform where students could easily talk their heart out without feeling that they are being judged since the counselling happens anonymously,” says Kageni.

In rare cases like Lucy Nyoro’s, a student, the app helped her in a different way. She had been using the app because her mental health was at stake. Then, the app had a glitch and she could not access the counsellors when she needed them the most. Instead, she opted to talk to some of the people working with the app, who are also students, and she was advised to talk to a psychologist who helped her in the end. “I did not want face-to-face counselling, but that is the route I went for at the end of the day because I needed help, which I got,” Lucy narrates.

UNCLEAR FUTURE

Coincidentally, one of the 12 students that were part of the app development did not know that he would also use it and get help from it. Musa Matendechere, a 24-year-old Microbiology student coded the app together with other professionals and he terms its success a fluke. His first assignment as a coder helped him and other students. “I had my own issues, say pre-depression, with an unclear future because of financial constraints. I blindly developed the app not knowing that it could change my life. I am now a sane person,” says Musa.

Isa Khalid, 23, an interior design student who also plunged into the opportunity as a graphics designer says: “I’m happy to be part of the Rada application project because students’ health will be well taken care of at the comfort of their smartphones.”

Kageni says: “Students go through a lot, and sometimes can’t open up. We hope this app saves them from doing the unthinkable.”
Apart from counselling services offered via the app, peer counsellors, who are students at the university, also talk to the students on the various issues that affect them.