Welcome to the Online Counselling Podcast, exploring the practice of counseling through technology. Here’s your host, Clay Cockrell.
Clay Cockrell: Hello and welcome. I’m Clay Cockrell. Welcome to the Online Counselling Podcast. This is a podcast dedicated to learning as much as possible about the space where psychotherapy and technology intercept, webcam counseling, text, using technology to reach people for counseling. I’m a therapist working online and the more and more I did it, the more I became furious about others that are doing it and what challenges they were facing. So I thought let’s go ask them. The podcast was born. I hope it’s been helpful.
It’s been a lot of fun to do and I’ve learned a ton. It’s grown from talking to therapists working in the field to vendors and consultants who are catering to them. My belief is that we can all learn together from each other’s experiences, and this can be a resource for those working online or those thinking about it. The profession is changing and we need to understand how that change is going to affect us.
Today’s guest is Poonam Jalan. Beautiful name. She is with yourdost.com. I’ll explain what Your Dost means during the actual interview. Your Dost is an online wellness platform based in India. They bring professional counselors and experts to a population that has tremendous need and facing a lot of challenges.
I did a little research. India has a population of 1.25 billion people. The most conservative numbers say that 5 percent of the population lives with some form of mental illness. That could be of course depression, anxiety or schizophrenia, bipolar, etcetera. But that’s over 50 million people. Nine in ten go uncared for in a culture where there is great stigma in receiving psychiatric health, psychotherapy. Government states one in five people need counseling. One in five people need some form of counseling either psychological or psychiatric. Here’s this. Experts say that there are 4000 psychiatrists, 1000 psychologists, and 3000 social workers for the entire country. For the entire country.
Official language of India: Hindi and English. English is one of the two official languages of India. There’s a huge need for mental healthcare in India, and there is a growing population of those that are tech-savvy and able to access care through the internet. Therefore, online counseling can fill a need. I am so proud to be able to talk with Poonam about the mission of Your Dost and how they are meeting that need. I hope you enjoy the podcast. Please leave any questions or comments. Be sure to rate and review because we want to hear from you how we’re doing, what do we need to change. You can follow us on Twitter now. We are now on Twitter. Our hashtag is @oncounsel. Just that, @oncounsel. Thanks very much and I hope you enjoy the podcast.
Hello and welcome. This is Clay Cockrell with the Online Counselling Podcast. Today I am thrilled to welcome a therapist from yourdost.com. That’s Y-O-U-R-D-O-S-T.com. The therapist I’m speaking with is Poonam Jalan. She is calling me today from India. Poonam, thank you so much and welcome to the podcast.
Poonam Jalan: Thank you so much, Clay, for inviting us. It’s an honor really to be able to reach out to the audience worldwide.
Clay: Poonam, you are a psychologist, a social worker. What is your background?
Poonam: I started out as a normal homemaker. Along the line I realized the importance of mental health. And then I decided to study at a much later age when people normally are child-rearing. So I went back to college. I decided to go back and I did my masteral in counseling from Australia. Then I did my internship in Singapore. Yeah. I also did certification in restorative practices. It’s a couples counseling program. That’s my background. I’ve been associated with Your Dost for the last four months. I have recently moved back to India. As soon as I came back here, I found out about Your Dost and I joined.
Clay: I’m glad you did. Just to give our listeners a little history. We were hoping to speak with I believe the founder of Your Dost, Richa Singh. Perhaps we’ll have her join but we’re having some difficulty with connection. But Your Dost—and I was just learning in our pre-conversation—dost in Hindi means friend, right?
Poonam: Yes.
Clay: The site is actually yourfriend.com. Tell me a little bit about the thought behind naming it that way and the reason behind it.
Poonam: Normally, human beings, we find it easier to speak to a friend than a professional or a psychotherapist or a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Basically we have a huge population in India. Mental health is still pretty much a taboo. To make this more accessible for people to relate more to the whole idea I think and kind of really checking with the name. Yourdost means your friend. Just talk to your friend.
Clay: Really kind of to take away some of that taboo which culturally you’re saying in India there is a taboo about getting mental health assistance.
Poonam: Yes.
Clay: I was reading a little bit about Your Dost, a study with the World Health Organization saying that there’s a huge population of the mentally ill or people struggling with mental health issues and that 32 percent of the world’s suicides are in India.
Poonam: Yeah.
Clay: This is really an outreach to a population who is reluctant to receive that help in a more traditional way, correct?
Poonam: This is exactly why the Richa thought of the idea for coming up with this platform. It’s because she went to a college with just like study pressure, peer pressure, placement pressure. One of her close friends committed suicide because she just thought that she couldn’t get a good job afterwards. That kind of shook Richa really bad. She thought she didn’t want to do anything else but kind of promote mental health awareness across India and come up with something to reach out to such people and tell them we are here to listen. Just talk to us.
Clay: In a more informal way.
Poonam: Yeah. Because you cannot really go out and talk to each and every person. You have to create this platform so that people can come and talk to you, reach out to you.
Clay: Explain to me. Yourdost says that they are an emotional wellness platform. Do I have that correct?
Poonam: Yes, correct. Yes.
Clay: What does that mean? What are some of the services that you’re providing?
Poonam: On Your Dost presently, anyone can come and anonymously chat with professionals even 24/7. It’s available for everyone. They don’t have to disclose their name, their gender, their age. Nothing. We just take it from where they come. We provide one-on-one chat and there of course the provision to have voice chat, Skype calls also. But we’re still looking on that. We’ve got more than 70 professionals onboard who are constantly responding to people’s queries, chats. They are not just counselors or psychotherapists. They are also MBAs, engineers, entrepreneurs. Sometimes you can just come and say, “I started my idea and I don’t know how to go about it.” You have a person who’s actually done a startup and they can just guide them along. It’s a lot of things. It’s not just depression and stuff.
Clay: Essentially, the client is someone who has a problem. That problem could be depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, or it could be “I’m having trouble with a startup. I’m having trouble with my studies.” Yourdost then matches them with someone that might meet their needs whether that’s a life coach, somebody who has startup experience or a psychotherapist.
Poonam: Yes. Perfectly well-said.
Clay: That’s fascinating. You’ve got 70 different professionals who are there 24/7. I imagine there’s some kind of rotation. Is this more of a forum, email-based, text-based, IM? What’s the technology behind it?
Poonam: Richa’s co-founder is a tech guy. They’ve come up to this platform. We can have real-time chat with our users or they can leave us offline messages or we have a discussion forum where they can discuss with the other users, people probably going through the same issues than them. There are a lot of things you can do. If you visit the website, you’ll know that there’s a lot to offer there. A lot of self-help things available online for people if they don’t want to chat with anyone or discuss it openly, they can still get help from our website.
Clay: It’s fascinating. It’s a wealth of information, kind of like almost a frequently asked questions where it leads some of the problems that we have heard, and these are the answers that we have given. Maybe this answer will help you as well, right?
Poonam: Exactly, yeah. Usually it does.
Clay: Exactly. How are people finding Your Dost? What is your outreach now and how many users do you have?
Poonam: Each time we have an article or publication with some mention of Your Dost anywhere, we have this flood of callers. We have a huge population in India. You know that. We get users from all over the world and it’s not just in India. We get people from Japan, Hong Kong, USA, UK, everywhere because it’s only circulation. It’s how social media works. It’s just word of mouth. We were like really overwhelmed with their responses. As you would just go and see how many chats we are handling per day, it’s huge. I’ve been with Your Dost for four months and I’ve handled more than 2500 calls already.
Clay: Two thousand five hundred calls in four months.
Poonam: Yes.
Clay: That’s a lot.
Poonam: Uh-huh.
Clay: I’m assuming in the US we have a typical 45 minute to 50-minute session. I’m assuming that’s not the same here with Your Dost.
Poonam: No, it is pretty much the same. We try and come down and we do it just like we would in a face-to-face counseling session. A user comes and we try and understand the problem and then we try to provide them solutions and we give them homework and a time or date to come back to us again. So pretty much lasts the same time. Just a little bit more sometimes because there are some clients who need extra support, but that’s okay.
Clay: I’m assuming you’re having a massive impact on a population that is in need. The need is self-evident if you look at the numbers and the recent studies. Let’s back up a little bit. What about some language issues here? Mostly-Hindi speaking? Also English-speaking?
Poonam: The advantage here is that in India, English is pretty much the official language. Everyone understands and speaks English. But there are let’s say a small 1 or 2 percent of people who are not very comfortable with English. But then they have all the 70 specialists onboard, someone would be speaking their language. We have this whole pool where we can transfer chats, we can recommend people to go back to someone else there. It’s working pretty well for us, I would say.
Clay: That’s wonderful. Is there a central location or do you, Poonam, do you work from home?
Poonam: Yeah. I work from home. Richa is like more than 6000 miles away from me right now. She’s based in Bangalore, which is more than 1000 kilometers away. That’s where our main office is. That’s where the whole base is, that’s where the whole tech thing and the whole backend is being based there. But all the counselors, the specialists onboard, they could be anywhere like all over the place not just in India. They are from US, Singapore.
Clay: Is Your Dost continuing to grow and bring on even more professionals?
Poonam: Oh definitely. Because considering the outreach now, you can never have enough really. There’s obvious need. The more, the merrier. The more professionals they have, the better it gets for us.
Clay: Wonderful. I’m just reading through some of my notes on this article about Your Dost. This was back in December 2014. The platform had received close to 70,000 users and growing at 40 percent month on month.
Poonam: Yeah.
Clay: This was almost a year ago. 10,000 registered users at that time.
Poonam: Yeah. We then just started. The whole idea was so new. People wanted to know how we could help them or how this works. A lot of people just come in and they have no idea how to go about it.
Clay: You’re kind of educating the population. There is help. This is how you do it.
Poonam: Exactly.
Clay: What about the cost, the funding for this? Can you speak a little bit about that?
Poonam: Where I know for now, text-based, the real-time chat will always be free on Your Dost. We have voice calls, Skype calls. They would be premium services. People would have to pay for it, but it’s a cool feature Right now we are just focusing on building kind of a user-based.
Clay: Right now it’s kind of text-based. There’s some voice obviously, but you’re going to develop further in video and Skype connections, correct?
Poonam: Yes. Because as we understand as we kind of grew, we realized that there are a lot of people who are not very comfortable with typing or they want a real connection with the counselor. They always keep requesting, “Can we have a number where we can call you” or “Can we have a Skype call or a video call or something?” The whole idea came up. We can develop more on this. Yeah, we’re scared. That’s just baby steps. We were just arriving and we’re kind of overwhelmed with the whole response.
Clay: Yeah it sounds like that you are getting a bit overwhelmed in a really good way. With all startups I think is true is trying to understand the population and understand how best to meet that need as you deal with growth and the technology end of it and of course funding issues. The professionals that are working at Your Dost, the psychologists and life coaches, are they volunteering their time or are they getting some type of salary?
Poonam: There are three types of special friends as we call them. They are special friends because they are professionals. These people could be enhanced counselors because we always need someone to be there 24/7. Then there are people who are consultants who are paid for their time. And then there are people who are pure volunteers. They volunteer their time whenever they can. There’s this commitment to when they would come or how much time they would do. It’s working out pretty well because there’s always someone or the other who’s there to contribute to the whole thing. But Richa has been hiring. She has been lucky that she got some funding from the agency recently. I don’t know too much about it because she used to bring me and the whole team on this…
Clay: Absolutely. We’re going to try to contact Richa later and perhaps have a follow-up interview with her for the podcast. But certainly just wanted to get the perspective from a therapist who’s working there because I thought this was quite interesting. Richa does not have a history in mental health. She’s just someone that saw a need because of this event that happened in her college years and created this platform to help others. But she does not have a background herself. Is that correct?
Poonam: Yes. That’s correct. She’s into engineering. I think I wouldn’t say that she saw the need. I would say that she’s an emotional person. She was too much affected by the whole thing that happened around her and she thought that she had to do something on these lines and brainstorming kind of what-have-you. I would say I always see that. All therapists are wounded healers. Something happened in their life to kind of nudge you towards this career.
Clay: Right. I’m learning that more and more as I speak with people who are doing this type of work all over the world. Tell me a little bit about you and some of the issues that you are hearing with your—was it 2500 calls? I didn’t write that number down.
Poonam: A lot. Yeah lots of calls. I could broadly categorize that there are study pressures and there are relationship issues. Someone was in the wrong career choice because someone wanted them to be… It’s all cultural. They’re like “Okay, my dad said I had to be a doctor, but I’m here to do things like that.” So yeah a lot of those calls. Yeah, that’s more I have seen so far.
Clay: What about the age group? What do you think the target population most people are using this service? Is there a general range?
Poonam: Yeah. I would say I’m pretty much clear about it. Let’s say it’s between 18 and 35. Like really young generation who’s pretty much aware of what is going on in the startup areas or how to use the internet and how to access all these. People younger are actually not allowed on Your Dost. But we had had some cases that people who fake their age. They’re much younger than what they say. But there are no I would say pretty much very young people on Your Dost.
Clay: Is this familiarity with technology or is this a cultural change older people still having that stigma and taboo of getting counseling, maybe a combination of both?
Poonam: Yes exactly. That’s what I was about to say. It’s a combination of both because for example my dad he knows what’s new in technology, how to use it. But I’m sure he would never go for counseling. But the new generation they know how to use the internet and they know there’s a need sometimes for support when it comes to their mental health issues.
Clay: Is there a change you think in accepting and normalizing a mental health treatment?
Poonam: That’s what we’re trying to do.
Clay: That’s what you’re trying to do. I will say that I am someone who checks my website. I do marriage counseling online as well as this podcast, and they were looking at the frequency of search terms and they’re able to look at geographically where these terms are coming from. They looked at online counseling. The number one or number two place for the last six months to a year, Ireland and India. Certainly someone is searching and there’s a lot of people searching for these terms. I was fascinated by that. Perhaps Your Dost is making an impact here.
Poonam: I hope so because that’s what we’re trying to do. We’ve all been there. We’ve all had those pressures growing up. We were not free to choose and we had choices. We were told what to do. Along the line, we learned this is not how it works. If you kind of follow what others tell you to do, you are going to end up one bitter, grumpy person. I’m glad that something like this came up and we are kind of trying to change the way people see these issues. They don’t have to really do it. That’s what we are trying to say. Just follow your heart. Just do what you want to do. Yeah, change is happening. It’s definitely there. Yourdost is playing a big role I would say because I can see it.
Clay: Are there other platforms coming online in India that offer similar services?
Poonam: There are some government-funded help lines, but they’re multi-suicide help lines like usually in need. You can call them and they will chat with you on the phone. But it’s not as systematic as it is on Your Dost. On Your Dost we try and keep it as close to face-to-face counseling as we can.
Clay: Has there been any difficulty with the technology? Like Richa for today was unable to join us because of a little bit of glitch in the connection. Have you found that that has been problematic?
Poonam: Yes because we have a rating system, right? Every time you have a chat with a counselor, you get to give a feedback about the whole experience. We have in general a system. We also get to give a feedback about the client. What happens is if the client is using 3G somewhere, sitting in a bar and then the call dropped, they think the therapist is not into it and they’re not answering or whatever and they say this is pathetic, this is not working. That really happens. Once you kind of built a rapport with them and you know your user on a regular basis, then just send them an email saying, “Sorry, we lost the connection. Can you reach out again?” That’s fine. It’s a very rare situation but it does happen.
Clay: It does happen. What I found is that most people just work around it and say, “I’m sorry. The call dropped. Can we reconnect?” Genuine approach is felt and responded to I think in most cases. The other question I had was could you tell us a little bit about the regulations in India? For example, in the United States, we are struggling with licensure issues across different state lines. There are certain regulations of what technology can and cannot be used doing psychotherapy over the Internet. Are there any issues in India that perhaps we should be aware of that you can kind of educate us about?
Poonam: I would say we are very lucky that we don’t have any such guidelines and we are able to reach out to many people in the best possible way we can. Yeah. These issues just don’t arrive because it is just a great need of the hour that we’re just thankful that something like this exists. Because in India, being still a developing country, there are many issues in the limelight than mental. This is probably not the priority right now. Maybe it would be in the future. But as of now, we’re good. If you have a qualification like if you’re a qualified mental health professional, you’re good to go. You don’t need anything else to back you up.
Clay: Alright. That’s very good to know. Is there anything else that comes to mind that you think that maybe our listeners could benefit from from your experience or just about online counseling in general in your part of the world?
Poonam: Well, when I joined Your Dost four months ago, that was my first time counseling online. I was initially very uneasy with the whole concept because there’s a lot of things we therapists rely on like body language and expression. Is the person well-groomed, sweating? What is going on with them? Is it a male or female I’m talking to? There are so many things that we miss when we counsel online and when it is anonymous. Those were big concerns for me but along the way I learned that, okay, fine, it’s all about just helping. If a person is coming with an issue, it doesn’t matter if it’s a male or a female or 16 or 35 or whatever. You do your best and just provide the best that you can. Yeah, a lot to learn. Yeah.
Clay: A bit of a learning curve for all of us I think as we adjust to how the technology is changing the interaction between psychotherapists and client. I can’t thank you enough for sharing a bit about your story and about the need in India and how Your Dost is meeting that. To our listeners, Poonam was gracious enough to speak with us despite having a very sore throat. You did wonderfully well. Thank you so much.
Poonam: Thanks for giving me this opportunity to speak on behalf of Your Dost. It was great. Thank you.
Clay: Absolutely. Stay on the line. I just want to say goodbye to our listeners. You’ve been listening to the Online Counselling Podcast. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and the Online Counselling Podcast which is @oncounsel and on Facebook, the Online Counselling Podcast and at onlinecounselling.com/podcasts to listen to other episodes. Thank you so much for joining us. We’ll see you next time.
As an addendum to the podcast that you just listened to, I emailed Richa Singh who is the co-founder of yourdost.com because she was unable to Skype in with us and participate in the interview because of some technical difficulties and also they were moving offices. She was very apologetic. But I said, “Can I email you a few questions and have you respond?” And she did. I just wanted to go over what she wrote back to a couple of questions I sent her.
The first question I asked was: How many clients are you serving currently and what is your growth rate? Her response was: We do 350 conversations on a daily basis. We are growing 40 percent month on month, which is astounding.
The other question I asked, and this is a long response so I’ll just read verbatim what she wrote back. the question was: How is the view of counseling changing in India? Is it becoming more acceptable? Her response was: However ironic it may sound, but the word “mental” is associated with madness and insanity. As a result, seeking mental counseling is a huge taboo in our society. Seeking support is considered a sign of weakness. Most of the times, we keep our problems to ourselves because we are not very comfortable accepting our vulnerabilities. There are issues of discovery and availability also present with searching for a relevant counselor nearby. We believe technology is a potential contender for filling these gaps especially anonymity and reach. This has helped us get some early acceptance of the solution from people.
She also writes: Another challenge we face as a country today is the importance of mental health care. In fact, health care itself has been a field which is largely ignored in India. Coming out of a doctor’s clinic without prescription or medicines means “[0:36:27.8. Hindi words]”
I’m sure I did not say that correctly. But she translates that to me “the doctor cheated me.”
That’s one of the challenges mental health brings with it. Counseling sessions are mostly about empowering you to take decisions which would help make things better, not about preaching or prescribing medicines. It’s a solution found by an open conversation between two individuals in a proper setting. A lot of this is changing today. We are seeing a lot of startups coming in to preventative healthcare and getting good response from people with the attention that mental health care is able to grab today, from celebrities to investors. We believe we are at an inflection point of the mental health industry.
That was her response. It’s fascinating and a little window into Indian culture and what they are up against and how they are changing that.
The third question I asked was: How are your professionals paid? Is this volunteer work or per session? Her response was she would like to skip this for now. I understand that because I think this is a startup. They’re still working on their business model, and with all startups it’s somewhat hectic in trying to understand what is going to work, how you’re going to get funding, and what’s the best way to pay for your services and also meet your client’s needs. I’m sure we’ll be able to hear more from her.
If you would like to help out yourdost.com, and there’s even a section if you would like to participate as a professional with yourdost.com, go to their website and find out more. Again, thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope to see you again next time. Thank you!