Lalitpur: HappyMinds.Health, a startup that provides counseling services on mental health, has completed its first year of operation.
Addressing the ceremony organized to celebrate the anniversary on Saturday, founder and CEO of HappyMinds Shreeya Giri said over the last year the company had provided over 1,000 hours of individual counseling.
“We are serving Nepali community members living across nine nations including the US, the UK, Australia, Germany, South Korea, the UAE and Qatar,” said Giri. “With corporate partners, under the Employee Assistance Program, we are offering mental health support to over 5,000 employees and their family members.”
HappyMinds said is the only private mental health firm in Nepal to offer a toll-free hotline service for emergency support.
“In the next year, we are planning to introduce learning and development programs to support the Nepali community’s mental health needs,” said Giri.
District Governor of District 325 of Lions Clubs International and Honorary Consul of Ethiopia, Dr Rajendra Giri, congratulated the team on the successful completion of the first year of operation.
He said people are facing several mental health-related problems after recovering from Covid but are not able to get counseling services due to a lack of trained counselors and facilities.
He said that people go for checkups on their physical health as soon as they feel ill, but there’s no tradition of seeking mental health support. “The challenge is to devise new products and services, said Dr Giri.
One of the senior counselors at HappyMinds, Clinical psychologist Dr Suraj Shakya said mental health is a very sensitive sector and every patient needs to be dealt with due compassion and respect. He said sustainability is quite important for a startup and advised HappyMinds to find ways to sustain its operations.
Over 20 mental health professionals are affiliated with the company.
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