Who We Are: Kaya Guides runs a self-help course on WhatsApp to reduce depression at scale in low and middle-income countries. We help young adults with moderate to severe depression. Kaya currently operates in India. We are the world's first nonprofit implementer of Step-by-Step, the World Health Organization's digital guided self-help program, which was proven effective in two RCTs.
Pilot: We ran a pilot with 103 participants in India to assess the feasibility of implementing our program on WhatsApp with our target demographic and to generate early indicators of its effectiveness.
Results: 72% of program completers experienced depression reduction of 50% or greater. 36% were depression-free. 92% moved down at least a classification in severity (i.e. they shifted from severe to moderately severe, moderately severe to moderate, etc). The average reduction in score was 10 points on the 27-point PHQ-9 depression questionnaire.
Context: To offer a few [...]
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Outline:
(04:44) Part 1. About the Kaya Guides Program
(04:49) What is Kaya Guides and what do we do?
(05:13) How the program works
(05:35) Evidence base
(06:11) Why guided self-help is effective
(06:50) Why this work matters
(07:52) Program design
(08:46) Target participant profile
(09:14) Impact measurement
(10:00) Part 2. Pilot Impact and Cost-Effectiveness
(10:18) Impacts on depression
(11:01) Comparison
(12:10) Effect Size Estimate
(14:35) Takeaway
(15:02) Cost-Effectiveness
(15:29) Pilot Cost-Effectiveness
(17:15) 2025 Projected Cost-Effectiveness
(19:15) Program Impacts According to Participants
(22:50) Part 3. Recruitment
(22:55) Quick Stats
(24:20) Participant Profile
(25:38) Part 4. Retention
(27:45) Part 5. Participant Feedback
(31:19) What's Next
(32:05) Support Us
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First published:
June 16th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6NaRJpSn2zfRSnGYN/kaya-guides-pilot-results
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.