Langa Mabena
Musawenkosi Moyo
A Bulawayo-based youth-driven organisation, African Proactive, Resilient and Independent Mindsets with Empowerment (Afriprime), has developed a mental health chatbot called ZinBot aimed at assisting people, particularly the youth, struggling with mental health issues.
The chatbot, which is accessible to all people for free, offers users mental health assistance, self-development coaching and mentorship support.
In an interview, co-founder of the organisation, Tanaka Zinyengere (22), said the innovation was motivated by the need to offer mental health support to those without access to mental health facilities or professionals.
“The development of ZinBot was inspired by the growing mental health challenges faced by young people, the escalating suicide rate in our communities and the country at large, and the need to provide assistance in our rural communities where access to professional mental health support is limited.
“We saw the opportunity to leverage artificial intelligence to create an accessible, private and reliable mental health companion that could help individuals navigate their emotions and mental health concerns in a stigma-free environment. Additionally, we realised that most youths prefer anonymity and their problems may require urgent attention,” he said.
Zinyengere also stated that in order to ensure that the chatbot gives appropriate and accurate responses they have consulted with numerous mental health practitioners across the country.
“We gathered feedback from mental health professionals in order to refine ZinBot’s responses and improve the chatbot’s ability to offer appropriate resources and have already gotten reviews from psychologists and mental health professionals. “
He stated that during its development of the chatbot they faced a lot of challenges ranging from programming to expenses.
“One of the key challenges we faced was ensuring that ZinBot could provide empathetic and relevant responses to a wide variety of mental health concerns. It required extensive research into mental health issues, counselling techniques and the development of a natural language model that could offer support while maintaining the tone of care and understanding.
“Another challenge was ensuring that the chatbot respects diverse cultural perspectives on mental health, seeing that we are purely African and therefore the chatbot must be responsive to such.”
He said over time, to diversify the chatbot they plan to add many other languages, especially to the chatbot’s functionality, considering that they want the chatbot to go global.
Furthermore, he noted that before the official launch of the chatbot, which will be done before the end of the year, they will have trials where they will share the chatbot with many people and see how it works.
“We plan to conduct broader user testing with select groups, including youth advocates and everyday users, to ensure that ZinBot delivers the best possible user experience,” he said.
Zinyengere urged people to pay attention to mental health and offer safe and healthy environments to people struggling with mental health issues.
Online Reporter