Published by the Students of Johns Hopkins since 1896
March 28, 2024

Atrium app to facilitate mental health counseling

By ALYSSA WOODEN | February 9, 2017

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COURTESY OF ATRIUM

After several semesters of debate on how to improve mental health at Hopkins, Shrenik Jain and Ravi Shah have attempted to create a new platform for counseling services.

Students have criticized the University’s available resources and  have looked to combat the stigma surrounding mental health.

In response to these concerns, Jain, a junior, and Shah, a graduate student, created a new mobile app called Atrium, which is meant to provide an anonymous support platform for people struggling with their mental health.

Although the Student Government Association (SGA) has officially endorsed the app, some students are wary of its potential impact.

Users choose a therapy group to join. The groups focus on combating depression, work stress and substance abuse problems, among others. A licensed therapist sorts users into anonymous groups of five to seven peers struggling with the same issue.

Each user is individually connected with the therapist who provides professional advice and support. Participants join weekly group counseling sessions over voice chat and can message their group at any time.

The app’s anonymity is intended to allow users to talk and receive feedback from peers and professionals without worrying about judgment or stigma.

Atrium has not officially been released, but the developers will launch a beta version on the Hopkins campus in the coming weeks.

Jain first came up with the idea for Atrium while working with fire departments and rescue squads as a first responder, where he witnessed patients and emergency workers suffer the consequences of untreated mental illness.

“While I naturally saw patients afflicted, what surprised me more was how effective social stigma was at keeping people out of care,” Jain wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “I watched fellow EMTs and FFs develop issues with alcoholism and PTSD and then suffer in silence for fear of judgement.”

Shah, the co-founder of Atrium,  provided the idea for an anonymous group chat for people struggling with mental illness, and Jain and Shah soon began work on Atrium.

They both explained how creating the app proved to be an arduous process, even though they had advisors and mentors from Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes and Johns Hopkins Tech Ventures, as well as receiving funding from several organizations. Jain recalls the toll it took on his grades and sleep schedule for over a year.

“Working full-time allowed us to build up some momentum and grow our team to reach the point of our current closed beta [at] Hopkins,” Jain wrote.

The team also faced challenges in finding mentors who saw Atrium as an alternative approach to treating mental illness.

“Mental health care in general is a tough space to try and innovate in,” Jain wrote. “On one hand, you’ve got statistics showing that 2/3 of those diagnosed with a mental illness don’t receive any form of care due to issues with stigma, cost, et cetera — so the system is clearly broken.”

Jain described how those involved in helping people struggling with mental health problems have also been using the same methods for a very long time.

“But on the other hand, you’ve got therapists, insurers and healthcare administrators who are used to providing psychotherapy the same exact way for the last 40 years, with no incentive to change,” Jain said.

Although Jain and Shah eventually found psychiatrist advisors, they were initially met with a great deal of skepticism from health professionals.

“It is the job of treatment to help people based on their preferences, not conform to a provider’s antiquated idea of what they are providing,” Jain wrote.

John Hughes, president of the Hopkins chapter of Active Minds, is optimistic about how Atrium may help address the stigmatization of mental health.

“I think that Atrium could really help with the social impediment to positive mental health outcomes — developing the cultural literacy to have people discussing difficult and stigmatized feelings and symptoms with their peers is a long and uphill battle,” Hughes wrote in an email to The News-Letter.

Hughes emphasized that the anonymity that Atrium provides is important.

“Providing a controlled anonymous forum for that to take place is a huge stepping stone on that learning curve,” Hughes said.

He also noted the lack of resources the Counseling Center has for students experiencing mental illnesses.

“The Counseling Center can be very helpful for students dealing with acute or chronic mental health issues that they or people around them can recognize, but in addition to the Counseling Center receiving finite and arguably insufficient resources from the University, the University doesn’t offer much in the way of support for students struggling with more subtle mental health issues,” Hughes wrote.

Overall Hughes is optimistic about how Atrium can help tackle mental health problems that affect the student body.

“Atrium provides two major unique advantages — first, its anonymity allows students to be more frank about their issues, and goes fairly far towards breaking down stigma barriers,” he wrote. “Second, it has immediacy — Counseling Center (or any therapy) appointments are scheduled, going to one of the APTT rooms requires the time in the day to do so. Atrium, being an app, is available immediately.”

Nevertheless, junior Alexandra Hansen has concerns about Atrium’s goal of creating confidential and anonymous forums.

“I don’t personally know a lot about the coding behind it, but I would really like more information about how they can truly ensure that the anonymity is secure,” she wrote in an email to The News-Letter.

Hansen also voiced that she is worried that moving mental health services to the digital realm might not be an adequate replacement for in-person counseling.

“I’m concerned because a large part of group therapy is the accountability that everyone is there for a reason, and they are a real, physical person,” she wrote.

Hansen argued that putting people behind a screen may make it harder for them to talk about their problems since they might be scared about saying too much and having someone realize who they are.

She also highlighted another possible unintended impact of anonymity.

“It’s been proven through different mediums that people feel less accountable to ideas than they do to people, so to make it an anonymous group takes away the person and leaves behind an idea,” she wrote.

SGA Executive President Charlie Green explained how the SGA has partnered with the app and is helping to promote it around campus.

“SGA has publicized the app via all school emails,” she wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “We have a marketing commission which we use to publicize all of SGA’s initiatives on campus and have been pushing out information regarding a new entrepreneurship space we have assisted in creating. We use our marketing commission frequently and are glad to have helped publicize the app!”

In spite of the initial challenges, Jain is hopeful that the app will increase access to mental health and peer support and possibly expand its influence to many other organizations like police and fire departments, the military and hospitals.

“The technology we are working on has the potential to help millions,” Jain wrote. “There is something immensely rewarding in applying technology to improve the lives of patients and providers in a totally novel way. We’ve a long way to go until we realize our full vision, but even the validation we’ve received so far... is supremely rewarding.”

Jain is still unsure when the team will release Atrium.

“It’s too early to put a specific day for a release,” he wrote. “We don’t want to rush the app to scale before it is are ready.”


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