Sehyog

According to official data from the ministry of social justice and empowerment, India has an estimated 3.4 million drug abuse victims. This number excludes alcoholics, who figure at around 11 million in the country. These are just the figures for drug addiction and alcoholism, but the same is true for gambling, smoking, gutka addiction, and domestic violence. Out of these 3.4 million drug abuse victims, a mere 0.3 million have registered themselves in these de-addiction centres, which is just 10% of the total figure.

A big reason behind this low rate of registration is the social stigma that is attached to addicts and victims. In India, in particular, this stigma is very strong. Consequently, the vast majority of these victims are not able to find the courage to seek help from the concerned authorities, for fear of the response they will get, and the way they will be treated. This is where Sehyog comes in.

Sehyog aims to aid victims and addicts in recognizing, understanding and fighting the issues that they face anonymously. Registration requires only a username, password, and valid email ID. The email is not disclosed to other users, but is required only for verification purposes. Using the features of Sehyog without revealing their identities, the users can feel secure throughout the process of rehabilitation.

Features

Diary: The Sehyog diary functions much like a normal day. Each day, when you open the app, you will be asked whether you relapsed yesterday or not. The answers you give shall be recorded and this entire record will be available to you. This will help you to understand if your self-restraint and your condition is getting better or not.

Forum: The forum is an online discussion platform where you can ask any questions you have or ask for any specific advice you want. The forum is divided into various categories, each representing a different problem. These categories then have the various threads opened by users in the categories. Any user can open a thread in any category, can comment on a thread, and can upvote comments or the thread question itself. Wanting to know if others have experienced some problems? Ask away. How they dealt with them? Ask away. How much time does it to overcome the problems? Ask away.

Group: Groups are very similar in functionality to chat groups. You set up a group by selecting a list of users, and then anybody can send messages to the group that other members will be able to see and reply to. If you’ve been impressed by the knowledge and advice that some user has been imparting on the forum, then perhaps you wish to converse with him personally. What do you do? Make a group with him. Perhaps you wish to set up a group where people suffering from the same problem share their stories with each other (similar to an Alcoholics Anonymous’ meeting groups). What do you do? Make a group with these users.

Information: The information section, as the name suggests, contains information about each of the issues on which Sehyog focuses. It contains information about the effects of these problems, about how to recognize these issues, and about how to fight against these issues. Recognizing the problem and understanding the need to fight against the problem is as necessary as fighting the problem.