@David_NEAR this is a question - what is the proper category to request funding from?
Thank you for the feedback
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Great and sensational initiative. I believe mental health is a big take on societal reality as much as it’s been overlooked, it’s also very necessary in building ideas to bridge the gap in humans from different aura.
I hope to see this come alive 
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This is so important. Nice done 
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Hey @David_NEAR
Could you please guide us as to who do we need to approach this for funding?
Thanks
Sahil
Amazing initiative! Would love to support in whatever way I can 
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Love the whole idea, my recommendations
- This is an introductory post, make a Funding proposal different from that of an introductory post
- You can reach out to the community Dao, The NEAR HEALTH TEAM and NEAR MEDICAL TEAM for collaborations and Futher fine tuning of your Funding proposal
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@jlwaugh @FritzWorm @williamx @Monish016 @sterryo
@Community_Moderator @community-team
we would be greatful for your recommendations and observing, if such an initiative can be funded by Community DAO
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Hey guys,
Since the retirement of the Ecosystem Development DAO
Funding for things like this, that being projects which don’t fit into the Creatives or MarketingDAO funding verticals, would fall under the @community-team
Although I think there’s every good intention in this proposal, I don’t see how it completely relates to NEAR. It more seems like something that NEAR has been squeezed into.
Where did you get this quote from? I spoke to the NH team and they said they weren’t in contact with you?
This sounds expensive and unnecessary.
Where are you seeing the demand for this?
Therapy and counseling is a bordered environment bound by regulations and patient-doctor confidentiality (at least here in the UK). I don’t think the same levels of checks and balances would be able to be upheld in an environment like this.
I can see you’re verifying their documents but it then boils down to who’s watching the watchmen?
I would be opposed to funding this for the reasons laid out above, but happy to hear the opinions of everyone else and @community-team
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i have long pondered on the intersection of web3 and mental health and must commend the efforts put into developing this proposal. i believe the creation of such a DAO keeps humanity at the center of its NEAR purpose and no amount of resource is ever enough to preserve humanity. I look forward to seeing this DAO succeed in its goals and vision as well as expressing the principles and vision of the Protocol. THE FUTURE IS NEAR !!
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Hi @David_NEAR
Thank you for a detailed response and raising questions that we can shed light on.
I’ve tried to answer all the questions you’ve asked. Please let me know if this makes sense or are there any more grey areas that you might want clarity on.
Our council members are trying their best to make this work as our research, experience and belief has shown that this could be an area which could help millions of users in the future which would make NEAR reach more people and would allow NEAR to be seen in the light of good humanitarian work
Your questions are marked in bold and the responses follow after that.
“Although I think there’s every good intention in this proposal, I don’t see how it completely relates to NEAR. It more seems like something that NEAR has been squeezed into.”
The reason for this proposition is to onboard therapists and test therapies in metaverse using NearHub, for a community of online therapists to thrive in the NEAR ecosystem.
This helps NEAR in following ways
- Onboarding therapists and clients on NEAR - This itself can onboard hundreds of online based therapists and users and allow them to interact with NEAR wallets, Mintbase to mint their NFTs and get familiar with the NEAR ecosystem.
- We will provide them custom environments to have therapies in the metaverse (nearhub) instead of a zoom call or a video call. This itself could have a lot of demand as clients now can design the space that is comfortable for them to have therapies in. The spaces would be designed by NearHub, generating revenue for NEAR
- NEAR branded social media and blog for MetaTherapy DAO will provide brand outreach to thousands.
- It will give NEAR protocol an informational and research leverage as we would have tested metaverse space for therapies and we’ll know what are the advantages and issues.
- It will position NEAR as a futuristic and humanitarian brand as it is trying to solve an issue that millions are suffering from
“Where did you get this quote from? I spoke to the NH team and they said they weren’t in contact with you?”
Got the quote for NearHub from the link mentioned below. Haven’t spoken to them yet. If the price is lesser then it will be even better. I don’t mind modifying the proposal to a lesser price.
This sounds expensive and unnecessary.
We can’t say if it’s unnecessary or not because we haven’t tested it yet. This is anyway in the 2nd Phase after the DAO starts generating money through online consultations in the metaverse.
This will be one of the last areas to be explored as it could be costly with unknown chances of success.
According to our therapist onboard, who has worked on exposure therapy, she thinks it could really help people get over fears of spiders, heights, insects etc. However, we do not know if it will be successful or not. If it works NEAR could be one of the first to do this.
“Where are you seeing the demand for this?”
This came in just yesterday and is literally what MetaTherapy is aiming at.
MENTAL METAVERSE - TAGO LEADS THE WORLD IN APPLYING BLOCKCHAIN IN MENTAL HEALTH CARE
The market expects to reach US$ 493.8 Billion by 2027
You can find information projected about the future of mental health industry in the market research done below
https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/mental-health-market-A11770
I’ve additionally attached a few screenshots of a few top online therapy websites as seen in a website analysis tool called Ahrefs. It’s one of the best paid tools to analyse monthly websites stats and is regularly updated.
Please look at Organic Traffic on top right of the screenshot. You will see that the traffic is between 100k to 1Million users per month for different websites offering online therapy and online meditations.
[Note - The traffic on these sites are also conservative as these tools ( like Ahrefs) can’t index all the pages on the internet and according to them, the organic traffic is generally 3-4 times higher than what is shown in the organic search bar]
Don’t judge the number of tabs opened 
“Therapy and counselling is a bordered environment bound by regulations and patient-doctor confidentiality (at least here in the UK). I don’t think the same levels of checks and balances would be able to be upheld in an environment like this.”
These are valid questions and this is where we are stuck
- How to get HIPAA compliance for the DAO
- How to secure the sessions and patient doctor confidentiality from a technical standpoint in the metaverse
- Can we create personal spaces for each therapist and is it possible for recordings to be absolutely private? Can they be encrypted when stored on our servers?
- Will developers have access to the recordings and can this not be the case?
- What are other areas that we are not able to see yet which could be a fatal error for this project
I’d be more than happy to discuss this if we have any legal team which is onboard, so we can figure out grey areas. This is where we would need help.
I can see you’re verifying their documents but it then boils down to who’s watching the watchmen?
- All of the therapists will have a Masters Degree or a Doctorate Degree in their field. They will have to be qualified and certified by their state’s professional board after successfully completing the necessary education, exams, training and practice. While their experience, expertise, and background vary, they all must possess at least 3 years and 1,000 hours of hands-on experience.
- Art based therapists need a certificate from an organisation they learned from.
- Life coaches and meditation teachers may or may not possess documentation.
This is the criteria on various websites who are leading online therapy today and we’d like to adhere to the same.
These are our first draft guidelines which are subject to change if new information comes to light.
I hope I have answered your questions. Let me know if you have any other query.
If everything is answered, I’d request you to guide us with
Legal team, so we can understand what areas we need to work on.
Other DAOs who you think can help us fund this
Anyone who could potentially mentor us to realise this goal
Thanks
Sahil
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Hello Sahil,
Probably it’s a nice idea.
I don’t understand how the therapist will onboard users. Will he speak about Near Ecosystem during the therapy session?!
I see the risks.
How we could measure success in therapy? What will happen if therapy will not work as expected? How will check the therapist’s licenses (or it’s available only for some selected therapists)? Will it be group meetings or p2p?
Sorry, It doesn’t resonate with me.
You can ask for support from community-dao
Hello,
Appreciate your questions and doubts.
Allow me to answer your queries.
Therapist will not onboard clients. We will onboard clients and therapists post three months of testing the space with NEAR community members who would want to be participate as users and 5 therapists of different modalities.
As already mentioned in the main post, in Phase 2 we will try to onboard therapists and clients via ads created on social media and a website where they will be routed to.
A backend team of 2-3 members will be created or a chat bot will be created to help them onboard. We will have to look at this at a later stage with more clarity.
There will be individual therapies which will only be amongst therapist and the client and group therapies which will be with one therapist and multiple users.
Council members will collect feedback from therapists and clients post their session about technical issues, how to hey felt in the virtual space, what were pros and cons.
We won’t be measuring the quality of the therapist’s quality but the quality of the experience. If a therapist isn’t good enough a client can always leave and get a new therapist.
Our aim is to provide infrastructure conducive for metaverse based therapies. Which is what we’ll be trying to find via constant question and answer.
We will ask the therapists to share their certificates or license which can be uploaded in the metaverse room and can also be uploaded as an NFT for anyone to view.
I hope I answered your questions.
Please let me know exactly what does not resonate with you and I’ll be happy to reply.
We need your support and constructive critisism so we are able to realise this project with all due diligence done.
Great, ok.
What will be after testing and collecting feedback?
It sounds to me like you want to make R&D for therapists but using funding from Near.
Also You will promote the specific project (NearHub metaverse) - you can ask them for collaboration.
Why doesn’t it resonate with me? Sorry, I think therapists need to have direct contact (face-to-face) with the audience, they need to feel and see emotions, facial expressions, gestures.
Hi @mr_free,
I’m Sanaya, part of the proposed council and a practising Psychologist.
As seen in the pandemic, mental health practitioners all around the world have continued to work online. People have seemed to be more willing to come and talk about their issues especially if they know the therapist is not from their city/country.
While seeing facial expressions and gestures is important, people have been able to open up more with the idea of therapy being accessible through a voice call or just an audio call.
And over this course, the therapists have also gotten a hang of it.
Once this kicks off we can definitely try to inculcate some sort of a video call if it’s necessary but from what we’ve seen so far, an audio call has been as effective.
At the end of the day, therapy is about creating a safe space for clients to be able to voice their issues whether that’s just through audio or video.
As for the testing and collecting feedback, it’ll only be used to make the users have a better experience in terms of being able to share. Our focus will be to explore how comfortable the users are in our therapy-specific designed metaverse spaces. The feedback will be from therapists and users about the quality of their sessions and their experience in the Metaverse. This will allow us to tweak and make changes to our designed spaces in the metaverse if needed.
The User always will have the option of going for in-person therapy wherever they live, this proposal is for people who find it hard to step out of their houses and share their problems with others.
Hope this helps clear your queries
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Hello sanaya,
Thanks for the reply.
I am happy that you want to help other people, but I didn’t understand why NF will need to sponsor the therapy for some individuals, how measure the result and impact to Near Ecosystem, also how it relates with crypto (excluding word metaverse) and have many other questions.
- In future people who will be on-boarded will be paying the therapists using Near protocol via Near wallets. So all the on-boarding will happen for NEAR and the number of users in the ecosystem will grow.
- NearHub will develop spaces for therapists to hold therapies in and for custom spaces for clients will be designed by NearHub too, which will again be on Near protocol, so the payment done to NearHub will also benefit Near ecosystem.
- It will be amazing for Near protocol’s goodwill and brand value.
If a new ecosystem is built on Near all the transactions will happen using Near. The more the space grows the more number of people will be onboarded the more transactions will happen on the protocol.
but I didn’t understand why NF will need to sponsor the therapy for some individuals
Near is not sponsoring someone’s therapy. It’s called Beta testing the space.
We’re trying to develop a product here which could have millions of potential users. Don’t you think it makes sense to test the environments first?
You can’t take a space live without testing it. This will help us develop a better product.
how measure the result and impact to Near Ecosystem
For the demand and size of market please refer to the post mentioned below.
A service developed for a market size that big will only benefit NEAR.
We will test how clients feel in metaverse in order to be able to develop a better experience and service. So when outside people are on-boarded on near for Metatherapy they don’t leave the protocol due to lack of testing and not looking at grey areas.
Phase 1 where money is spent on testing is so the Phase 2, the Launch phase allows us to be prepared with basic issues that any user might face. Hope this makes sense?
also how it relates with crypto
No idea what this means.
and have many other questions.
Please ask direct questions, however all the responses I’m giving you are already answered above.
Let me know if you still need explanation and we can get on a call as well.
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- Not exactly, The therapist will get the payments/profit
- Not exactly, The Nearhub (independent project on Near, and as I know commercial) will get payments/profits.
- Probably, but not exactly, It couldn’t be proved.
If it’s beta testing, so you provide R&D. Someone who asked for this R&D could pay for it.
New here and checking in on how this effort is coming along. I run a network of 6K therapists in the US and are looking to leverage this network in a therapy-focused DAO.
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