Vision
To create an effective nationwide system of off & online monitoring, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and social adaptation of people affected by PTSD and other mental health issues and building public awareness regarding causes and treatment methods. The scope of people affected includes veterans, active-duty military, law enforcement, special service officials, and persons involved in the maintenance and operation of critical infrastructure.
Relevance of the Facing Life project
The low level of educational and communication policy on public awareness of the manifestations and methods of correction of psychological and psychiatric problems at the societal level continues to significantly increase the stigma of mental disorders. This leads to a lack of informed demand from the public for effective ways to diagnose and correct such disorders. Public authorities, society and institutions avoid public discussion of the problem and its solution.
The lack of international communication regarding the issue, makes it extremely difficult to engage the world's best practices and methodologies. The effectiveness of state programs for diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders remains low, which is significantly aggravated by the lack of qualified psychiatrists and limited availability of psychopharmacology.
Additionally, it is not possible to assess patients living in remote locations. Current barriers include errors or deliberate distortion of diagnosis results due to ingrained bias, negative attitude of people with mental disorders to psychiatric care due to fear of stigmatization, and an under developed level of social rehabilitation programs for people with mental disorders and their relatives – factors that deepen the PTSD problem and consequences of it for society.
Proposed solution
Creating and advancing the capacity of a nationwide system in Ukraine to diagnose the mental status of war veterans, law enforcement and security officials, as well as other citizens of Ukraine at risk of PTSD and other mental disorders, by using innovative technologies, and developing appropriate policies leading to a national full cycle system for further treatment, rehabilitation and social adaptation of patients.
Applied technologies
The background of the project is applying advanced telemedicine technologies, biometric data collection, Big Data analysis and Artificial Intelligence.
The project envisages the use of innovative biometric technologies for facial recognition and muscle movements (face recognition), which analyze rapid (<1/15 seconds) involuntary facial expressions of emotions as biometric indicators of emotional state, as well as technologies for retinal scanning. The obtained data is processed within a cloud (or local) architecture determining a person’s certain mental state probability based on the patterns and signature analysis.