Israel Uncensored: An Israeli Start-Up Detecting Mental Distress Online

[Music] josh houston here israel uncensored on the land of visual network at the land of israel.com it is monday january 4th 2021 the 20th of tibet 5781 hope you are well i hope you are safe in your part of the world this is our first show here for the uh the new year the 2021 year i hope you had a good holiday weekend for those who celebrate the new year hope you're safe hope you're doing well don't forget you can always get in touch with me during the week josh at the land of israel.com on facebook joshua hasten or josh hasten israel advocacy and journalism on twitter at josh haston and on instagram as well the last several shows we have been doing exclusively news all the latest from israel and i really thought this was an important opportunity to focus on a different aspect of our coronavirus cove 19 reality here in the world it's perhaps affecting a lot a lot of people around the world here in israel and around the world and that is mental health uh mental distress if you are unaware is the number one health issue in the world these days in israel by the way i don't this is astounding this is horrible there's 18 suicide once every three days in israel and the statistics that i'm giving you now i didn't come up with that with them on my own i got them from my good friend arnie draymond he is a consultant for a company called mood night and they're at the forefront of trying to help people with potentially disastrous mental health especially now especially relevant now during coronavirus moon night's mission is to provide society that schools needed to make the the next leap in mental health care for young people they have developed a software platform that can detect mental this is unbelievable mental distress online in real time from texts posts emojis chat box your artificial intelligence program has been proven to be 92 accurate um similar to what humans can do so without further ado my good friend arne draymond a consultant for mood night thanks for joining me today arne thank you josh it's a very disturbing statistic that you had mentioned early on and mental distress has been indeed uh on the rise particularly during the last uh nine to ten months with around the world the world health organization has put mental distress as the number one uh health issue above anything you know cancer and heart disease all the what we would call regular killers mental health has certainly just grown and it needs to be dealt with in some fashion so the company you represent mood night they have seemed to find some type of methodology using people's online behavior in order to assist those looks like particularly children perhaps you can expand and talk about if it affects or it can have an impact on adults as well they're able to understand based on what you do online if you are in need of help i mean this is revolutionary go ahead and describe that correct first of all so it's great to have a uh israeli startup an early stage startup uh part of the great israeli high-tech scene this is in social tech it's called uh where it's high tech used for the benefits of society the software has been running live for two years already it's not just a theory from some phd in a university somewhere that it could work but it's actually been proven the uh founder java doron spokerman she has almost 20 years now been running a website called four girls the number four four girls and it's really a forum for uh teenage and young adolescent uh women here in israel it's very popular tens of thousands of girls interact all the time and she noticed a few years ago that there was a already a sharp increase in mental distress online and took the steps necessary to try to create some kind of technological solution to detecting that mental distress online and then being able to do something once you've detected it so the the software has been developed it uses artificial intelligence and machine learning and what they call nlp natural language processing it uh works in tandem with uh medical professionals mental health professionals so that psychologists and social workers and others are involved to keep the artificial intelligence let's say in line because humans can only do so much and machines can only do so much but together they can achieve this 92 success rate as you mentioned of detecting mental distress online and then alerting you know first they what they do is they categorize it it could be a high risk medium risk or low risk high risk both immediately to the emergency authorities the police the helpline the whatever non-profit might be in the area to work with a person you have others taken aside at the moment a person because it doesn't have to be just children or teens or adolescents or young people it could be anybody and it could be not just mental distress as it relates to suicide it could be any kind of mental distress it could be drug and alcohol addiction but the the software is pliable so that it it can be taught any set of keyword over the course of time and then improved upon so that it can actually detect whatever you would be looking for so i want to understand how it works so in order for moon knight software to have the ability to see what's going on online so an organization or a company would need to install install the software into their system and then it would have the opportunity then to monitor people's behaviors or is this where are we talking about you know are they able to just detect uh automatically somebody on facebook who is experiencing uh mental health issues i mean how are they able to you know be effective uh in reaching those uh in need excellent question so the uh software comes with what you would call a dashboard so that it does fit into the platform uh it could be a website it could be uh some sort of social interaction site it could be an application an app of some sort and then what people are posting is public information all right we're not talking about anybody's privacy here it's all public golf things they post like take facebook as an example take any of the like reddit or any of the other sites it's all public information if they if they facebook or reddit or any particular platform chose to and use the software to monitor their posts they would get alert on a dashboard again defining them as either high medium or low and depending on what you know like i said the high risk of emergency services immediately the medium risk would wind up with mental health professionals and low risk was one of the great things that moon knight has done they've been training teenagers to do peer-to-peer counseling work online with other teams so that on a low risk assessment it certainly uh and there's proven models for this to use the peer-to-peer project but they've done it in uh bad yam with the municipality there last year they uh are now looking to do a project together with the organization the umbrella organization of youth groups here in israel uh sophie and all the other youth groups that they have for the scout so that they could do a joint project and really create a massive amount of online uh positivity right getting teens to be able to react to other teens and catch the issue early because we know that mental distress like many other you know physical ailment if you catch it early enough it doesn't tumble into something worse it doesn't become those high risk categories stays low risk and can be dealt with and it can be improved upon i mean this is this is so very important i mean we we hear so many horror stories of uh particular teens who experience some degree of shame uh on social media or being bullied on social media and then go to the extreme whether it's you know god forbid suicide or trying to harm themselves or whatnot i mean this this sounds like something so revolutionary that this should be part of you know any type of interface all over the world in order to you know social media can be so positive but on the other hand it can cause so much damage especially for the young the young people out there i mean this sounds this israeli technology sounds like it should be really you know interfaced throughout the world i mean how far along uh are are you is the company at this point in terms of uh distributing its technology to you know all the various channels uh around the world really so thankfully over the last two years they've had grants from the uh rashidah of the israel innovation authority from digital israel and they were chosen as part of a microsoft ai for good program but they've been getting some uh push to make technology say more public more uh available right but they're still as i mentioned it's an early startup they have a grant now for seven hundred thousand shekels uh two hundred thousand dollars but less than two hundred thousand dollars uh but they needed a matching grant in order to get it uh the online health uh digital health uh ecosystem as they call it is growing right we all know just in the last nine months with kovit telehealth you've all of a sudden been able to speak to a doctor and get information and get prescriptions and get all kinds of things done online that a year ago look pretty much impossible and so that whole field of online health services is growing and so they're really positioned in a good place in order to uh branch out and make the market grow this project that i mentioned the peer-to-peer project with the youth group would be a great example of combining philanthropy right if the philanthropist wanted to sponsor let's say this technology and program the project for a particular youth group for all of the israeli scouts just think of the amazing good that could be done to have it run uh and of course moon knight is looking at you know as a business not just as a philanthropy uh for investors and they're looking to expand into europe they've already had two inquiries from a major health organizations in europe and uh to expanding the united states as well again language is not an issue the first one ever be done in hebrew they can easily expand uh the english and french spanish etc so what do we need to do arnie how can we get uh moon knight the funds that they need in order to make it happen get that matching grant what's the best way to get in touch with you what's the best way to get in touch with the company let's uh let's give them a push let's get them what they need in order to help uh teens out there young people especially during this coronavirus i know thank god we have the vaccines coming out but i was just talking about it with somebody this morning this is a critical critical period people unfortunately seem to be lacked because they see that the vaccines have come out i mean we really need to stay strong whether it's you know following the restrictions uh or you know keeping our mental health in check during these uh critical times before the vaccine kicks in arnie how can we get in touch with you how can people reach you how can people reach the company maybe there's somebody out there listening right now who wants to wants to help terrific so mood night is spelled m-o-o-d mood then night like k-n-i-g-h-t and the teens are called team night their job is to go out and be the white knights and shining armor to really help save others save lives we know that it works we see that it work it's been proven that the one in batyam uh girls were trained and imagined they reached over 10 000 other teams just over the over period of the summer right it did crazy so moon knight m-o-o-d-k moon night.com is their website the information is there uh you can reach me arnie uh what's the best way uh my last name is draymond so my email address is aj draymond gmail.com uh they can reach through you you know how to reach me easily and i'm more than happy to discuss the project further either the philanthropic side of it and it could be expanded not just youth organizations and not just youth organizations in israel but really anywhere uh or investors in the uh the great big world of high tech is israeli high-tech and innovation but what it's all about so if anybody didn't get did not catch that did not get the information get in touch with me i'm happy to put you in touch with rna drama consultant for mood night doing holy work especially now during these troubling and trying times i want to thank you for your time today as they say keep it up keep up your holy word help helping people out there during the pandemic and beyond um we are going to take a short break right now come back with all the latest news from israel it was great to speak to arnie this morning and do an interview it's been a while since we've had anybody on the show my name is josh haston this is israel uncensored on the land of israel network out the land of israel.com it is monday january the 4th 2021. we are under a lockdown here in israel despite the lockdown i am here in jerusalem outside the walls of the old city we're going to take a short break come back with part two of the show if you missed any of this segment with arnie grayman of course it'll be posted later on all of the social media networks short break and then we'll be back with part two [Music]