New App Targets Student Mental Health Crisis in Pandemic

Startup Ajivar helps students using advanced artificial intelligence (AI), and making a supportive online community available to all

Know a university student who is struggling because of COVID-19? You’re not alone. More than eight out of 10 college students are experiencing significant levels of anxiety because of COVID-19, according to a recent survey by the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. And not just students, but staff and faculty also increasingly feel isolated, anxious, and depressed as a result of the pandemic.

On February 12, 2021, the Ajivar platform will launch a new functionality—the Real YOU community—specifically designed to help university students, faculty, and staff connect and support each other in this time of crisis.

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Real YOU is a free service available to any member of a higher education institution no matter where they are located in the world. As a safe and supportive virtual meeting place, Real YOU uses emotional intelligence-based prompts and tools to encourage members to talk about their life and academic struggles, and to respond to each other using compassionate and caring language.

“Real YOU is a safe space to be who you are,” says Trine Schmidt, co-founder and chief therapist of Ajivar, who created and manages the Real YOU community. “Although you are anonymous, there’s no hiding behind a profile picture, name, geography, or status. Instead, you truly connect with others by revealing your own vulnerabilities and responding to peers with empathy and compassion.”

The Real You community is part of Ajivar’s mission to help college students, faculty and staff improve emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and resiliency through mindfulness techniques and emotional intelligence curriculum-based training. It is a component of the Ajivar app, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered life coach specifically designed for the higher education market. With every interaction, Ajivar learns more about each user as well as the institution, and is able to make increasingly personalized recommendations.

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Ajivar is available for colleges and universities to license for their communities. The app can be customized to act as a centralized platform for students to access all the wellness services that institutions o****, such as counseling, hotlines, mindfulness or yoga classes, or peer counseling groups.

In addition to psychological wellness aid, Ajivar helps improve individuals’ self-awareness, productivity, self-efficacy, and leadership skills. Ajivar is deployed at a growing number of colleges in the United States.

Real YOU was conceived out of a sense of urgency during the Covid crisis, says Raj Goyal, co-founder and CEO of Ajivar. “We heard from our users how they were suffering from not being able to connect with friends and family, and from being denied typical college social activities,” he says. “And once we created the Real YOU functionality, we knew we had to help all higher-education institutions—even those not yet on the Ajivar platform.”

Real YOU is an opportunity for college students to support and empower each other, to decrease the separation and isolations that many have felt over the past year. “By helping all students in this way, we can effect true global cultural change, which is our mission,” says Goyal.

Like the Ajivar app, the Real YOU community component is simple to use. Anyone with a “.edu” email address can sign up. Members can send hugs and words of affirmation to others with just the click of a button. A “Question of the Week” engages everyone in in-depth conversations about relatable life situations. Ajivar also offers volunteer training so that students can achieve an official “Real YOU supporter” certification status, a way to grow their emotional intelligence skills and to be of even more help to their peers.

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