The World Health Organisation (WHO) honoured Data Management Systems (DMS) and its project team after launching the first free of charge national electronic platform in Egypt for mental health services and addiction treatment.
The platform aims to provide free government services for mental health and addiction treatment for everyone residing in Egypt.
It is the first of its kind in the eastern Mediterranean region and one of the fruits of cooperation between the General Secretariat for Mental Health and Addiction Treatment, the National Information Centre at the Ministry of Health and Population, the WHO, and the University of British Columbia in Canada, as well as psychotherapists and international experts in the field of psychiatry and addiction treatment.
The platform includes three main sections. The first provides educational and awareness content to users by providing important scientific information about common disorders in general psychiatry and its specialised branches, such as child and adolescent psychiatry, the elderly, and addiction.
The platform also deals with symptoms and mechanisms of dealing with psychological crises facing patients and their families. Moreover, it displays the services available at the General Secretariat for Mental Health and Addiction Treatment, such as introducing the hospitals and centres affiliated with the secretariat, locations, and appointments of specialised clinics and awareness campaigns.
The second section includes providing psychological support and counselling services through virtual ‘telemedicine’ clinics using a few simple steps that enable users to assess their psychological state through a general mental health questionnaire as well as booking a session with qualified psychotherapists, with the user then choosing the appropriate place and time to perform the session in complete privacy and confidentiality of users’ data. It also allows the therapist to transfer emergency cases to the hotline of the General Secretariat of Mental Health and Addiction Treatment for speedy immediate intervention.
The third section is concerned with the site’s supervisors and administrators, where they can monitor and evaluate the platform’s performance, and it presents the most important reports on the portal’s statistics, such as the number of users, their age, follow-up rate, most visited specialties, and other data.
