Being mentally disabled may come with its own challenges. It is not like other disabilities in a way because it deals with reasoning and affects the brain. As reported by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one out of four adults will experience mental health disorder in a particular year. It also observed that one out of every 17 persons has a severe mental illness.
It also goes to inform that only about 60% of the category with severe mental disorders gets mental health services. Youths of age between eight and fifteen get a form of treatment.
Help In Technology
Digital health is bringing a new approach to help people with mental disorders, a rare form of treatment that has assisted people with such health conditions to live out a good life. With the assistive technology available today, medical practitioners can find alternative means to help people with mental disabilities.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness, an organization where you can get everything you should know about mental health is also seeing the good of applying technology to help people suffering from mental disabilities. The organization holds the standpoint that traditional therapy approach to mental health may be good but may not be accessible or affordable to all. This partly gives the reason why the organization recently launched an app, NAMI AIR to serve the needs of people suffering from mental illness.
Apps And Handheld Devices Making Technology Work Out
It may appear that technology is only used by people without disability but this isn’t true. Technology is affecting the lives of people with mental illness in positive ways. Technology is incorporated in braille for the blind. People with learning disabilities, for instance, are getting a lot of help with various apps available in stores. There is no arguing it that teenagers love the use of smartphones. From the Pew Research report of 2013, it is amazing to find out that about 80% of teenagers have mobile phones with 37% having a smartphone. Since most chronic mental disorders occur in early teenage years, the smartphone technology is a helpful tool to reach this category of people. Some notable technologies either through apps or other forms of equipment have helped mentally disabled and related illnesses get assistance.
Assistive Technology
Liftware is self-stabilizing handles on which eating utensils can be attached. People suffering from illnesses that make them shake can use them to get stability. Parkinson’s diseases and other mental disorders can use this helpful technology while eating to get some stability.
There are some innovative and assistive technologies on the market that assists people with communication problems including persons with mental disabilities to learn better.
Grace apps are a range of application to help children with autism or with special needs to construct sentences.
Proloquo2Go helps people who have difficulty with speech or cannot talk at all to get help with communication.
Talkitt is an app developed to help people with communication problems reach out to others. The application is capable of translating unintelligible utterances into understandable speech so people can comprehend.
Note that there are many tablets and iPads today that offer functionalities to help people with mental disabilities get some support such as the touch to speak functionalities. Technology and mental disabilities are inseparable today with many innovative assistive technologies on the market. They help disabilities ride on limitations to succeed.