We catch up with Kanpassorn “Eix” Suriyasangpetch, the founder of mental health app OOCA, to talk about her latest project “Wall Of Sharing”.
How has OOCA changed in the two years it has been operational?
The last time we talked, we had just started the corporate business part of OOCA. Now we have more than 10 corporate clients ranging from clients with more than 1,000 employees to small SME businesses or start-ups. Our clients are in various types of industries such as oil, banking, retail and pharmaceuticals. As for individual clients, we have grown to more than 60,000 users on the platform.
What is the ‘Wall Of Sharing’?
It’s a project for social impact that OOCA created last year. We do this to create awareness and offer free counselling services to students, especially public university students. For this, we partnered with universities like Mahidol, Phayao, KMITL and several others. The students will be able to access our service without any cost. They can download the app and use their email to apply. The terms of use may vary from university to university depending on the agreement between us and the university but students can check details on the website. We created this project because we don’t want to just have a service for businesses but also want to give back to society. We understand that not everyone will be able to pay for the service of OOCA so we really want to emphasise that this is a service for everybody. This is a way where we kind of twist our business model so we offer help to those in need who don’t really have enough resources.
Why did you tailor it for students?
We actually didn’t specify it for students but we thought of everyone in need. For students, it’s easier for us to communicate with them since they’re more capable of using technology. In that sense, we would like to concentrate on the youth. But initially, when the project came out, it wasn’t limited to students. When it expands, we would like to bring in to more people who need it. We’ve started to extend our outreach to more types of beneficiaries. We just partnered with Freedom Story, an NGO that works on preventing child trafficking in Chiang Rai. We’ve extended it to victims of trafficking who are under the care of Freedom Story.
The laws and regulations around psychological services are limited, especially for those below the age of 18. It wasn’t clear if it was possible for us to provide a service for people of that age without the consent of their parents. We discovered it would be difficult to target students unless they were under some sort of guardianship so we decided to focus on university students, who are above the age of 18.
The ‘Wall Of Sharing’ is only available to a limited number of universities. Do you plan on adding more universities?
We’ve partnered with universities to help connect student information with our analytics so that it’s easier for them to come onboard using their personal or university email to use our service. But actually, students can come onto the platform even if their university isn’t partnered with us. They can just specify they’re from other universities. They can avail of the services without any cost. If other universities want to partner with us, we welcome that and they can contact us directly through our website or email us at support@ooca.co. The ‘Wall Of Sharing’ is not just limited to the universities we have partnered with but is available to all.
How can mental health in Thailand be improved?
I think the mental health situation got a lot better, especially in the last three to four years. More people talk about it, especially the younger generation. They open up easily and admit that they have issues or they need to talk to someone. But still, it’s not enough. It still needs more understanding, especially from the older generation who can’t relate. It can be improved through the efforts of the government and private sector, especially the media. They need to cover mental health more and circulate the idea of the commonalities of people suffering from mental health and how mental wellness is part of our daily lives. The entertainment industry and influencers can also help encourage people in opening up and normalise mental health discussions.
What can you say to people who are sceptical about talking to psychiatrists or psychologists or think that mental health isn’t important?
I don’t really think it’s about what I say but more about whether or not they’re willing to listen. Most of the time, if they’re not thinking that this is important, it’s hard for someone else to try and tell them that something matters. Even if we keep telling them that this is important, if they disagree, they’ll simply just disagree. If there’s ever someone close to them affected by mental health or if it affects them directly, that will be the moment they care and they will realise they need help.
With OOCA and the ‘Wall Of Sharing’, you’ve made access to help for mental health so much easier. However, is there a lack of assistance and how can it be improved?
There’s a lack of channels to talk about the issue, a lack of resources regarding mental health, as well as services to help. There are some who aren’t aware that a service like OOCA exists so we’re glad for the word to get out.