About MindNotes

MindNotes has been developed by NIMHANS, Bengaluru in collaboration with E-Health Center International Institute of Information Technology, Bengaluru. MindNotes has been possible with funding and technical development support from Microsoft Research India and design support from Icarus Nova, Bengaluru. MindNotes is thus an outcome of an intense collaboration between mental health and public health experts on one hand with technology experts on the other hand.

MindNotes Core Team

Dr. Seema Mehrotra is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, with 28+ years of professional experience as a clinician, teacher, trainer and researcher. She has worked extensively on development of mental health promotive interventions, youth mental health and digital mental health initiatives to reach the unreached. She has led numerous funded projects, mentored doctoral work and published research in these domains. She has played a lead role in development of indigenous mental health apps namely, PUSH-D, Wellness-Check.

Dr. Amit Sharma is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research India. He obtained his Ph.D. in computer science from Cornell University and B.Tech. in computer science and engineering from IIT Kharagpur. His work focuses on understanding the role of machine learning systems and technology in general, as they interact with people in high-stakes domains like healthcare. As a part of the Moments of Change project at Microsoft Research, Amit has worked on technology interventions to increase mental healthcare access through different mediums such as online forums, phone helplines and mobile apps. His work on mental health helplines in India won the Best Paper award at ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI), 2021.

Dr. Paulomi M Sudhir is a Professor at the Department of Clinical Psychology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru. She has more than 20 years of experience as a clinician, teacher and researcher. She is a consultant at the Behavioural Medicine unit, at the Department of Clinical Psychology. She is engaged in providing clinical services and training in cognitive behavioural therapies and mindfulness based, third generation therapies in addition to mentoring research. Her specific interests have been anxiety and mood disorders, health behaviours and personality and cognitive processes in mental health. She co-led the expert team involved in development of PUSH-D app.

Dr. Poornima Bhola is a Professor at the Department of Clinical Psychology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru. She is a therapist, supervisor, teacher and researcher with over 20 years of experience. Currently she supports psychological assessment and intervention in adult mental health and psychological rehabilitation services. She is deeply interested in youth mental health, personality processes and psychotherapist training and development and has mentored and conducted research in these domains. Her publications include books in the areas of reflective practice and ethics in psychotherapy practice.

Dr. T K Srikanth is a Professor at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bengaluru (IIIT-B). He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University in 1986, and a B.Tech (Mech. Engg.) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He heads the E-Health Research Center (EHRC) at IIIT-B. His research interests are in the areas of internet and mobile technologies, computer graphics, geometric modelling, and virtual and augmented reality, and the application of these to health care. He has been involved in a number of collaborative projects at EHRC, especially in the area of mental health. He has been contributing as a technology-partner for the development of multiple digital solutions at NIMHANS and has played a key role in development of PUSH-D and Wellness-Check apps. Prior to joining IIITB, he had over 28 years of experience in the software industry in India and the US.

Dr. Girish Nagaraja Rao is a Professor of Epidemiology, Centre for Public Health, NIMHANS. He is a medical graduate with a postgraduate degree in Community Medicine. He has been engaged in multiple independent and collaborative research projects including projects such as India component of the World Mental Health Survey and the National Mental Health Survey. The key areas of research have been geriatric mental health, maternal mental health, alcohol epidemiology, health economics and community mental health with a focus on health systems with a public health perspective. He co-led the expert team involved in development of PUSH-D app.

Vageesh D C is a Senior Research Engineer in Microsoft Research India, Bangalore. His work focuses on building innovative AI-infused products. He has worked on the Microsoft Math app and conversational search features in Bing.com.

MindNotes Research Staff

Dr. Janhavi Devdutt is a licenced clinical psychologist (Rehabilitation Council of India) and Counselor, Student Counseling Services, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. She has 7 years of experience working in the field of mental health where she has been involved in research and academia as well as active clinical practice. Her areas of interest include psychotherapy, mental health promotion, youth mental health and workplace well-being.

Jemimah A. Johnson is a psychologist with nearly two years of experience as a researcher following her post-graduation. Her areas of research interests are mental health promotion, technological interventions for mental health, technological addiction and mood disorders. She is currently pursuing MPhil Clinical Psychology course at NIMHANS, Bengaluru.

Prateek Chanda is a software engineer. He has been working on this project with the development team at Microsoft Research India. He likes spending time working on open-source software and and currently holds a bachelor degree in Computer Science. He is one of the key developers of the open-source sahay-app-toolkit.

Amogh Wagh is a software engineer at Slice. Amogh has a keen interest in building software products keeping the user and their resources in mind. He holds a Bachelor degree in Information Science Engineering. He is one of the key developers of the open-source sahay-app-toolkit.

Kanak Kataria is a Clinical Psychologist and Psychotherapist. She has completed her M.Phil in Clinical Psychology from NIMHANS, Bangalore, and her M.A. in Applied Psychology (Specialization in Clinical Psychology) from TISS, Mumbai. She has over 4 years of experience with research and 2 years of experience with psychotherapy. Kanak's research interest areas are health psychology, psychotherapy process and outcome, and applied psychology interventions to enhance mental health and well-being.

Meheli Saha is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who has completed her M.Phil from National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, and has more than 4 years of clinical and research experience. Her research interests are Self-harm Behaviours, Digital Mental Health, and Technological Interventions and third wave Cognitive Behavior Therapy interventions.

Sameer Segal is a Senior Research SDE at Microsoft Research’s Center for Societal Impact through Cloud and AI technologies. He is passionate about working at the intersection of science, business, and social impact. While working on MindNotes, Sameer has realized the important contribution that technologists can make towards improving mental well-being of society at large. He previously founded Artoo, a pioneer in the digitalization of micro and small business lending, that enabled loans worth USD $1 billion and impacted 5 million lives. Sameer holds a B. Tech from NITK Surathkal.

This statement sets out the National Institute for Mental Health and Neuro Sciences policy relating to the collection and use of your personal information in the MindNotes Program. This Notice is in addition to the Terms of Use. Your registration as a MindNotes user constitutes your agreement to terms of the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use.

Please note that this Privacy Policy applies only to the MindNotes app per se and not to any other sites that are linked to it or mentioned on the app.

Your personal information is important to us

NIMHANS recognizes that your privacy is very important to you and that we are under a legal and ethical obligation to protect the integrity of your personal information.

Why the program collects personal information from you

The app requires you to register using your Gmail id. This is used only for authenticating you as a genuine user and for enabling access to your account on subsequent logins. Further, no information you enter in the app is shared with Google or other entities. No other personally identifying information is asked for in the app.

When you engage with the MindNotes app, you will be asked to complete a number of tests and enter some information, which you may consider to be sensitive, about yourself. The program asks for this information in order to provide you with tailored and specifically relevant information about stress, anxiety and depressive symptoms. This information is stored in your workbook in the MindNotes database along with information about the date and time you complete each exercise. Information is also collected in summary form about most frequently visited pages. This is intended to help the MindNotes team understand how visitors use the Program. All the information gathered is stored on servers managed by NIMHANS and is subject to stringent security measures. Further,

• We will not use or disclose any information about you without your consent unless we are required to do so by law;
• We will never use your personal information to send you unsolicited information or "spam".

Confidentiality

The basic details as mentioned above and the responses you provide when using the app may also be used for conducting research to improve the utility of this app for future users. However, such research will ONLY use your information in a summary format from multiple users and in a fully anonymized fashion, (without any personally identifying details) so that it is not linked backed to you/any one person.

Security

Multiple measures are used to protect your information from unauthorized access or disclosure. Your identity will remain confidential and the data that you enter will not be made available to any third party other than the resource team of the app. We encourage you to read fully the terms of use.

Account Deletion

Our commitment to user privacy includes providing a clear and accessible process for account deletion through our website. When users choose to delete their MindNotes account, they can initiate this process easily by writing us on mindnotes.nimhans@gmail.com. We ensure the removal of personal information upon such user request. However, certain data may be retained for legitimate reasons such as security, fraud prevention, or regulatory compliance. We may also retain anonymized usage data for research purposes.

To delete you account send an email in the below format.
To: mindnotes.nimhans@gmail.com
Subject : Account Deletion
Body :
This is a request to delete my account with Mindnotes where my login email address is < please specify the gmail id you use to login to Mindnotes >

The delimited scope and purpose of Mindnotes App

We hope that you have got a fair understanding of the purpose of this app, its scope and limitations. If you have not yet read “About the App” section, we strongly suggest you to go over the same.

The Information contained in, or accessed through, MindNotes is for your general informationand Self-development use only and is not intended to be used as medical advice and should not be used to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any medical condition.

The diagnosis and treatment of clinical depression and anxiety requires a medical practitioner or qualified mental health professional. People seeking a diagnosis or treatment of depression, anxiety or other common mental health disorders should consult a medical practitioner or mental health professional. MindNotes is not designed to treat common mental health disorders. It is merely designed to help people enhance self-awareness about common mental health concerns and overcome mental barriers to seeking professional help if they need to do so. In addition, MindNotes offers a few self-help strategies and exercises for improving mental wellbeing. In a general sense, people are likely to find the information on self-help strategies to be useful; however this is NOT a substitute for seeking professional consultation and advice. There is no claim made that the material contained on this app is likely to be of help for all users.

If you have a mental health condition or if you are likely to have a diagnosis of mental health condition, you should seek professional consultation from a trained mental health professional or a medical consultant.

If at the time of registering for this self-care program or at any point of time after registering you notice that you are getting thoughts about harming yourself or harming another person, you should not continue to rely on this app but instead should seek urgent medical advice. If you so desire, the MindNotes team can try its best to provide you some information regarding the availability of centers/trained mental health professional in your region, if such information is available to the MindNotes team.

We strongly recommend that you always seek the advice of a medical practitioner or qualified mental health practitioner for any questions regarding personal health or medical conditions. We strongly recommend that you never disregard, avoid or delay just obtaining medical advice from your medical practitioner or qualified mental health practitioner just because of something you have read on MindNotes.

If you think you may have a medical emergency, please call a local help-line/reach out to an emergency service. A few helpline numbers are provided in the app for the convenience of users for urgent support, based on information available in the public domain. However, MindNotes is not responsible for the nature or quality of help provided through these services.

NIMHANS does not recommend or endorse any specific tests, providers (including, but not limited to, hospitals and physicians), products, procedures, or other information that may be mentioned in the app. Any opinions contained in the external links are the opinions of the individual author/websites not of NIMHANS.

The few questionnaires available on the app are intended solely for the purpose of identifying the anxiety and depressive symptoms or giving you a rough idea of a particular issue and are not designed to provide a diagnosis. These are either available in the public domain or have been used with due permission of the authors. The references to the same have been mentioned in the Reference list provided under Resources section in the app.

We have, in good faith, solicited support from a set of qualified mental health professionals who have agreed to volunteer some of their time for serving without charging any fee, as panel members in the professional connect section of the app. Their profiles are displayed based on the data made available to us at the time of writing the Terms and Conditions and may not be the most updated information at any point of time. The responses they may provide to the users reflect purely their own professional opinion and NIMHANS is not responsible for or endorses the same in any way. The users are solely responsible for deciding to use fully/partially or to discard the information/ suggestion/ views provided by any professional through MindNotes or for judging the suitability the same in their personal context.

You represent and warrant that you are at least 18 years of age or older. Persons under age 18 with depressive or anxiety symptoms are advised to talk with their parents/ guardians about getting direct help from a qualified mental health professional/medical professional. By accessing and using MindNotes, or any portion of MindNotes, you agree to be bound by each of the Terms of Use and all applicable laws and regulations governing the App. If you do not agree with any of the Terms of Use, you are not authorized to access or use MindNotes for any purpose. We reserve the right to modify these Terms of Use at any time. Your use of the MindNotes following any such modification constitutes your agreement to follow and be bound by the Terms of Use as modified.

Fees, charges and cancellation

There is no fee or charge for you to register with MindNotes. However, when you access the Program through the use of a mobile phone, your normal phone/ Internet charges will apply. There is no minimum contract associated with the use of MindNotes. You may choose to stop using the Program at any time.

License to Use

The information and materials on MindNotes unless otherwise stated, are copyrighted by the National Institute for Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), and may be used by registered users solely for their own personal use. We grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use our content for your own personal, non-commercial use. Except as otherwise provided, you acknowledge and agree that you have no right to modify, edit, copy, reproduce, create derivative works of, reverse engineer, alter, enhance or in any way exploit any of the content in any manner, except for modifications in filling out the forms for your authorized use. You shall not remove any copyright notice from any page/form.

Disclaimer of Warranties

You agree to assume total responsibility and risk for your use of the website, the service and the content. We make no express or implied warranties, representations or endorsements whatsoever with respect to MindNotes, the service or the content. We expressly disclaim all warranties, including, but not limited to, implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement with regard to the app, the service, and the content. We do not warrant that the functions performed by the app or the service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free, free of viruses or other malicious code, or that defects in the app/ server or the service will be corrected. We do not warrant the accuracy, currency, or completeness of the content, or that any errors in the content will be corrected. We reserve the right to correct any errors, inaccuracies or omissions and to change or update information at any time without prior notice. We do not, however, guarantee that any errors, inaccuracies or omissions will be corrected. The site, the service and the content are provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. The foregoing does not affect any warranties which cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.

Disclaimer of liability

You understand and agree that under no circumstances we will be liable for any damages whatsoever, including, but not limited to direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages arising out of the use of or inability to use the app, the service, or the content. If you are dissatisfied with the website, the service, the content, or the terms of use, your sole and exclusive remedy is to discontinue using the app. You acknowledge, by your use of the MindNotes app, that your use of this app is at your sole risk. NIMHANS is not liable to any user or person for any decision made or action taken in reliance upon information or content displayed or provided in MindNotes as well as for the responses provided by the individual professionals through MindNotes or for delays in providing responses to notes shared by users in the Professional Connect section of the app. It is your responsibility to make your own decisions about the currency, completeness, accuracy, reliability and suitability of information, services, programs and communities of interest contained in (or accessible from) linked websites.

Security, viruses, errors and availability

The internet is an insecure public network which means there are risks that information sent to or from this app may be intercepted, corrupted or modified by third parties. In addition, files obtained from or through this app may contain computer viruses, disabling codes, worms or other devices or defects. You bear the risks and responsibility for any loss or damage caused, directly or indirectly, by these risks and we accept no liability for any interference with, or damage to, your computer system, software or data occurring in connection with this Website.

Privacy

MindNotes reserves the right to limit the provision of its products and Services to any person, geographic area, or jurisdiction. MindNotes is not intended for use outside India and its content may not be most appropriate for those residing outside the country. You agree to comply with all applicable laws and local rules or restrictions relating to this app.

Risks and benefits

MindNotes offers a set of tools and techniques which aim to benefit users by:

1. Helping them to better understand their common mental health concerns
2. Helping them to better understand the mental barriers that interfere with seeking professional consultation or treatment when required
3. Providing (interactive) self-help exercises and guidance for managing common mental health concerns such as depressive and anxiety symptoms of low severity. The suggestions are based on the available research literature and commonly used psychological principles in management of depressive and anxiety symptoms/concerns.

MindNotes does not “treat” you, or replace treatment provided by a health and/or mental health professional. Even the section on Professional Connect is merely meant to provide an opportunity to briefly clarify doubts regarding mental health services or treatment approaches and is not meant to clinically evaluate your problem or provide diagnosis or online therapy/ any individualized solution.

Therefore, there are risks associated with its use, including:

1. the possibility that your symptoms concerns persist while using the Program
2. the possibility that your symptoms/concerns worsen while using the Program
3. the possibility that new symptoms/concerns or health conditions develop while using the Program
4. the possibility that the Program is not suitable for you at a particular point in time.

External links

Links to external websites or apps on MindNotes are provided for easy access to various sources of information for your convenience only. Such links do not constitute or imply an endorsement, sponsorship, or recommendation by NIMHANS of the third party, the third-party website, or the information contained therein. You acknowledge and agree that the NIMHANS or MindNotes Team is not responsible for the availability of any such site and that it does not endorse or warrant, and is not responsible or liable for, any such website/ app, its content, its privacy policy or practices, or the acts or omissions of its operators. MindNotes makes no warranty and accepts no responsibility or liability in relation to any information, products, services or advice provided by these external links and any views or recommendations provided in linked websites/ apps do not necessarily represent those of MindNotes. You acknowledge that you enter any third party websites/ links at your own risk.

Copyright

NIMHANS and the MINDNOTES team respect the intellectual property rights of others. If you believe that your work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, please provide the following information in writing to us

• A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright.
• A description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed.
• A description of the material that you claim to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information sufficient to permit us to locate the material.
• Information so that we can contact you, such as address, telephone number and e-mail address.
• A statement that you have good faith/ belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
• A statement that the information in the notification is accurate that you are the copyright owner or are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of a copyright that is allegedly infringed.

Upon the receipt of a proper notice of claimed infringement, we shall respond at the earliest to resolve the claim between the notifying party and the alleged infringer who provided the content in issue, including, where applicable, removing, or disabling access to content claimed to be infringing or by removing or disabling access to links to such content.

Your obligations

You are solely responsible for any content or material which you post or upload on the Program, or which is posted by another person using your Gmail login. MindNotes excludes all liability (to the extent permitted by law) for any loss, damage or expenses suffered by you or claims made against you arising from content or material which you post or upload on the Program, or which is posted by another person (whether using your username or password or otherwise).

Use of MindNotes

You agree not to use the MindNotes for unlawful purposes, and you agree to comply with all applicable laws, rules and regulations while using MindNotes.

• You agree not to use the MindNotes for any commercial purposes, including any advertisement, commercial solicitation, or promotion of any specific goods or services.
• You agree not to collect or use any information or other data available via MindNotes inappropriately.
• You may not distribute, modify, copy (except as set forth in these Terms of Use), transmit, display, reuse, reproduce, publish, license, create derivative works from, transfer, translate, sell, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble, or otherwise use MindNotes or the Content (as defined herein), except as specifically authorized in the Terms of Use, without written permission from NIMHANS.
• You agree not to use MindNotes to post or transmit any threatening, harmful, false, misleading, abusive, harassing, libelous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, scandalous, inflammatory, pornographic, or profane material or any material that could constitute or encourage conduct that would be considered a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, or otherwise violate any law.
• You agree not to use MindNotes to advertise or perform any commercial solicitation, or otherwise
exploiting for any commercial purposes any portion of, use of or access to MindNotes.
• You agree not to incorporate any code into the code of MindNotes or to use MindNotes to post or transmit any virus, worm, Trojan Horse, time bomb, spyware, bot, tracking device, screen scraping software or other computer code, file or program that is harmful or invasive or is intended to damage or hijack the operation of, or to monitor the use or operation of the Site or any user of the MindNotes.
• You agree not to use the MindNotes in conjunction with any screen scraping software.
• You agree not to restrict or inhibit any other person from use of MindNotes. You agree not to interfere with or disrupt the operation of MindNotes or the servers or networks used to make MindNotes available, or violate any requirements, procedures, policies or regulations of such networks.
• You agree not to use MindNotes to harvest or collect personally identifiable information about users of the Site.
• You agree not to use MindNotes to disrespect the privacy or views of others.
• You agree not to use MindNotes to impersonate another person or supply false information about yourself or another person.
• You agree not to allow any other person or entity to use your identification to post or view comments, or to otherwise access or use MindNotes.
• You agree not to post material on MindNotes that infringes on the copyright or other intellectual property rights of others, or the privacy, publicity, or other personal rights of others.

Your Suggestions

We appreciate your feedback or other suggestions about the MindNotes app, the Service and the Content, but you understand that we may use your feedback or other suggestions without any obligation to compensate you for them. For any queries or suggestions or complaints, you may contact: mindnotes.nimhans@gmail.com