In the Netherlands 25% of the population are immigrants. They typically suffer from more mental health issues than Dutch natives. They also have difficulty in reaching proper mental health care.

Problems

• Higher rate of mental health issues
• Language barriers
• Cultural and religious barriers
• Social stigma
• Treatment being Western and Caucasian focused

Robots can help

We propose a robot that provides support to mental health recoverers in their own home:

• Providing support in the patients language
• Culturally adapted
• Logging moods, sleep, exercise, medication and diet
• Assisting with exercises, demonstrations and videos
• Providing patients with information about their disorder
• Helping to keep in contact with their support network, carers and doctors

We thereby want to bridge a gap in the Dutch mental health care system and free up resources to address the great backlog in mental health care in the Netherlands.

Approach

We propose using a local LLM (like chatgpt) trained specifically in the language of the immigrant with cultural values of the immigrant, and useful recovery techniques from the health care providers and previous mental health robot projects.

The robot will be designed as a head on a torso with arms, and no legs. The robot should be affordable.

The project will follow a dual approach – as an academic research project at the Utrecht Universoty of Applied Sciences and a startup to produce a product that can be deployed practically in people’s homes.

What comes next

Funding

We are looking for funding, either academic research funding or startup seed funding.

Prototyping

We are in the early stages of prototyping.

Research

We are conducting academic research on previous mental health care robots, the risks and responsibilities involved in this domain.

Find this research here.

We are looking for partners!

In mental health care, academic research, robotics, government, ethics, funding, etc.

If you are interested please get in touch!

Email thosha@roborabbit-labs.com

Or use the contact form:

Our Team

Thosha Moodley

Project Lead

Renze de Vries

Robot Engineer

Academic Supervisor

Mirjam de Haas

Utrecht University of Applied Sciences

Advisors

Perusha Moodley

LLM and AI Safety Advisor

Vergil Bingen

Experience Consultant Mental Health Care