Experts at the Expo 2020 Dubai explored technology’s role in improving mental health

DUBAI: Improving mental health is an issue faced by all individuals, either through their own experiences or by supporting friends, families or colleagues. With this in mind, experts came together in a series of discussions during Expo 2020 Dubai’s Health and Wellness Week that ended recently to address the ongoing stigmas around mental health, the technological innovations supporting it, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Making positive changes to mental health can be challenging if the problem can’t be measured, Paul Hendry, Global Vice President of Health, Safety and Environment at engineering firm Jacobs, said during ‘Nature’s Healing Hands: Creating Healthy Environments for Living,’ which explored the link between the physical environment and the health and wellbeing of people, and how this influences policy – alongside the planning, design, construction, and operations of human habitats that support health and wellbeing.

One Million Lives (OML), an online initiative launched by Jacobs a year ago, saw collaboration between mental health experts to create a survey where users answer questions covering different areas of their health and wellbeing, on a sliding scale, to get an overall, individualised plan. Not a diagnosis, it aims to highlight certain areas that need improvement and the areas where respondents are thriving. Users can then access free resources online.

Hendry explained: “When you start answering those questions, you really start to think about your reaction to things over the past week or two weeks, and you start to get an insight into some of your behaviours.”

Encouraging users to check in on OML regularly mirrored concerns raised by Kerstyn Comley, Co-CEO of UK-based MeeToo, an app – supported under Expo 2020’s global innovation and partnership programme Expo Live – that allows users to talk anonymously about difficult things with other people of a similar age or experience.

Speaking at Expo Live Impact Series: Breaking Barriers Through Digital Medicine, Comley noted many systems are in place for crisis care, meaning individuals have to reach a state of desperation before they seek help.

She explained: “A lot of the work that we’re doing in the UK is preventative work – we go into schools, we provide education and we run activities… and it’s also about normalising issues. If you’ve got somebody whose anxieties are building up, if you can normalise the issues and reduce anxieties, there’s less chance it will escalate.”

Hendry has also seen the benefits of preventative action first-hand, citing a Senior Vice President and General Manager, who manages roughly USD 2 billion (AED7 b) of annual company revenue. Checking in on the OML platform every couple of days to measure his mental health so he can monitor his lifestyle, this user has since become a massive advocate, he explained.

Feeling confident about addressing mental health struggles, particularly for men, is another barrier to seeking help, but Hendry said data collected by Jacobs shows this is changing.

He said: “Men are equally as likely to check in on OML as women – we’ve almost reached a 50-50 split. We know that men between 35 and 45 don’t really want to talk about their mental health, but this data shows us that men want to talk about their mental health privately or anonymously – and try to process it themselves. Jacobs’ employees have started sharing their mental health scores to try to break down the barriers to honest conversations around mental health.”

When looking at the data collected by Jacobs, Hendry added that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted each age group differently – another factor when looking at mental health challenges. “Older age groups are coping the best. They’re not as impacted by social media use; their psychological distress is low, and that could be a result of more life experience and probably being a little bit more confident in themselves.

Across the globe, the OML team has seen 18,000 people undertake a full mental health check-in, taking 15 minutes to answer 75 questions on the survey, earning the initiative 10 million impressions on social media.

Key events across Health and Wellness Week, held at Expo in association with the Mohammed bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, and the WHO, are available through Virtual Expo.

Source: Expo 2020 Website