MUHS launches mental wellness application, MANAS for 5000 medical students

Pune: A day after the union government launched Tele-MANAS (Mental Health and Normalcy Augmentation System) to provide round-the-clock free tele-mental health services to people all over the country, the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS) also launched the Centre's mental wellness application, MANAS on Friday for its medical students across 469 colleges. 

The service would cater to around 5000 medical students of the college, who can register on the website and download the application subsequently. 

Also Read:World Mental Health Day: Govt launches Tele-MANAS for free 24/7 mental health services

The back-end research of the data collected for the pilot project would be done by the Armed Forces Research College (AFMC) in Pune for six months for officials to understand the stress factors affecting the medical students, as per a media report in the Indian Express.

The office of the Principal Scientific Adviser, Government of India had announced this initiative, with the then advisor Prof K Vijay Raghavan announcing the soft launch of the app and laying down the directions for its development last year. The Prime Minister's Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) had announced it as a national programme. 

Medical Dialogues team had earlier reported about the launch of the Tele-MANAS by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Tele-MANAS aims to provide free tele-mental health services all over the country round the clock, particularly catering to people in remote or under-served areas. A toll-free, 24/7 helpline number (14416) has been set up across the country, allowing callers to select the language of choice for availing services, and the calls would be routed to Tele-MANAS cells in the respective state and union territory. 

According to Lt Gen Madhuri Kanitkar (retd), vice-chancellor of MUHS and a member of PM-STIAC, MANAS is based on life skills and core psychological process with universal accessibility which is aimed at promoting positive attitude based on wellness. The project is a collective effort of NIMHANS Bengaluru, AFMC Pune and C-DAC Bengaluru. 

Dr Ketaki Bapat, the creator who conceptualized this mission, said that more than 1000 people from different parts of the country have used the application in a pilot mode, following which they received a positive response from Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Stating that any kind of research should be constantly upgraded and therefore long-term programmes are required, Dr Bapat said, "That's why we have now decided to take this MANAS programme forward." 

Meanwhile, the MUHS also signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) with National AIDS Research Institute and National Centre for Cell Science in Pune for three years. 

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