Developing A Mental Health Website For Afghan Men In Western Australia

Project Description

The project aims to avail a mental health website for the Afghan men living in perch, Western Australia. The website aims to improve the well-being and the safety of the immigrants by enhancing their psychological health in the long term. This idea of website development emanates from the health promotion strategies outlined in the Ottawa Charter (W.H.O, 2016). The approach insists on the promotion of education, shelter, peace, equity, and social justice among every citizen of a country. A majority of immigrants encounter mental complications due to the unfavourable dynamics in their host countries (Chen, Hall, Ling, & Renzaho, 2017). The cultural differences between Australia and Afghanistan also lead to depression and other mental disorders.

The Mental Health Volunteers (MHV) has developed a website on psychological complications (Batterham, 2014). The online platform elaborates how the victims of the illnesses can get assistance regarding their conditions. Furthermore, the website has detailed information on the causes, symptoms, and treatment options for the diseases. The developers of the website have obtained permission from MHV to use their format to develop the online platform. The website will have two language options which are English and Afghanistan. Additionally, the contents of the website intend to respect the cultural beliefs of Afghan men.

AMHOCN is a mental health website is a government portal that seeks to offer guidance to the sector of mental health in Australia (Coombs, Burgess, Dickson, & McKay, 2017). The website acts as a source of references for policymakers in the department of psychological health. Furthermore, the portal aims to train people about the symptoms of mental complications and how to get quality care. The site has created employment opportunities for internet experts who are managing it. The portal has different language options; hence reaching a wide audience. This project will apply the format of the AMHOCN to assist the Afghan men having mental conditions.

The beyondblue.com website assists Australians to overcome the severe effects of depression and anxiety (Cutler, Reavley, & Jorm, 2018). The online platform supports Australians with mental conditions by providing information about suicide, anxiety, and depression. The website does not restrict the age of people who can access it. Furthermore, Australians from every location can access and apply the information on the website. The website is informative as it provides various statistics of mental conditions over the past few years. Patients can also learn about the different treatment options and choose their preference. The language usage is simple, and everyone can read and understand the contents.

Objectives

The Black Dog Institute has also developed a website that assists the health of Australians with mental complications (Torous, Nicholas, Larsen, Firth, & Christensen, 2018). The website has instructions on how employers can create a workstation that is mentally healthy for the employees. The online portal also has suggestions of self-care strategies towards psychiatric conditions. The 2017 statistics on suicide cases due to mental complications are also found inside the online platform. The website also provides a link where citizens can make donations to assist the victims of conditions like depression and schizophrenia. This project intends to study the above platforms before developing a proper website.

The first objective is to build a website whose contents are written in Afghan and English languages. The Afghan languages in the online platform include Pashto, Dari, and Uzbek (Krause, 2014). The website intends to offer information on mental health to the immigrants. The audiences will learn about the causes, symptoms, and treatment options for psychological complications. The portal will also contain telephone contacts which the victims can call for assistance. The statistics on the mental health patients will also be inclusive in the platform. The developers want to ensure that the website is operational after one month. The first dispensation will contain ten pages having three hundred words per page. The languages used are English and the Afghan languages like Pashto, Dari, Uzbek, and Balochi.

 The second aim is to increase the access by the Afghan men in Australia to the mental health website. The stakeholders will reach a wide audience by advertising the platform’s details in the local television and newspapers. Postures will also be available at the local billboards to alert the residents of the existence of the website. The developers will allow the postures to stay the billboards for one month. The stakeholders will also print handouts and distribute them to the local Afghan community in Western Australia. The developers will also place advertisements on local radio stations to reach individuals who do not possess television sets. The stakeholders will also urge the local leaders like religious heads to inform residents about the website.

Find out the identity of the stakeholders, and develop a relationship with the Afghan community. Inform the residents about the existence of the project and the timelines of launching and implementing the contents of the website. Maintain a healthy relationship with the Afghan people.

Strategies

Obtain qualified web designer and well-versed language translators. The web designer should develop a platform that the Afghan men and women can access with ease. The translators should be versed with the various Afghan languages and the English language (Baker, 2016).  

Conduct a study on local services that can offer relevant information on mental health complications and the patients. Look for various stakeholders that are interested in the sector of psychological health. Establish the limitations and the available resources for the project.

Make in-depth contents for the psychological health website. Prepare enough hardcopy materials to serve the Afghan community. Ensure that the contents exist in different Afghan languages and English before uploading them onto the website. Send the hardcopy for printing.  

Establish social media accounts like Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp to direct users to the online platform. Update the contents of the social media accounts and the websites on a daily basis. Add both Facebook and Twitter links on the website to redirect users back to their accounts after they finish reading the contents.

 Establish plans to improve the essence of the website to the users. The plans include providing a link where well-wishers can donate money to assist the mental health patients.

The stakeholders will pay the web designer $ 250 per month. The language translators will pocket a joint $ 4000 in a month. The stakeholders will need $ 1500 for print media and $ 4000 per month for the project coordinator.

The success of the project will depend on whether the stakeholders implement it at the proposed timelines and style. The written report at the end of the exercise will indicate whether the implementation was a success or otherwise. The report will explain the challenges that the stakeholders encountered during the process and how the participants overcame the drawbacks (Wittmayer, Schäpke, van Steenbergen, & Omann, 2014). The written submission will also seek feedback from the Afghan community about the contents of the website. Positive feedback will indicate the success of the project.

Key stakeholders will include Afghan-Australian Association of Western Australia (AAAW), Islamic Society of Western Australia (ISWA), and local leaders. AAAW will interact with the Afghan community and help in promoting a working relationship between the Afghan men and the project stakeholders (Abraham, & Busbridge, 2014). ISWA will advise on Islamic matters that the non-Islamic project organisers may not understand. The local leaders will help to spread the details of the projects to the locals through various meetings. The organisers will also look for fundraising venues to support the project in the future. The stakeholders will also need another site for reading the report to the community.

Budget Estimate

Other stakeholders will include local business people, the Islamic community, and government representatives. The three groups of stakeholders will either assist to finance the project or provide valuable advice on during its progress. The media is another important stakeholder who will advertise the project to the Afghan audience. Local schools will provide venues for meetings between the Afghan communities and the organisers. Health specialists from the state mental health department will provide information and statistics on psychological conditions. Therefore, the success of the project will require a wide range of stakeholders.

The depletion of the initial funds can jeopardise the continuity of the project. Therefore, fundraising to facilitate the viability of the project is necessary. The organisers can achieve this by asking the partners mentioned above to assist in funding the project. The organisers also need to train the Afghan community on how to access and utilise the website. Support activities like donating smartphones and bundles will enable the community to maximise the information in the online platform. The organisers should make regular visits to the community to urge the men to continue using the portal for mental health purposes.

The organisers with the help of the partners should establish a computer resource centre where people without computers can access the website. Additionally, the government should build a physical library where the locals can acquire the hard copies. Obtaining both the online and the physical library should be free for everyone (Choy, & Goh, 2016). The project manager should maintain the phone contacts of the religious leaders and other local leaders. The regular communication between the organisers and the leaders can sort out any problems from the Afghan men and their spouses. Therefore, sufficient funds are necessary for long-term access and functioning of the website.

References

Abraham, I., & Busbridge, R. (2014). Afghan-Australians: Diasporic tensions, homeland transformations and the “2014 Syndrome”. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 34(3), 243-258.Retrieved from:

apps.acu.edu.au/staffdirectory/index.php?rachel-busbridge3

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2016) Census QuickStats Retrieved from https://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/036

Australian Immigration and Citizenship, A. (2012). Afghan Community Profile. Retrieved from https://multicultural.vic.gov.au/images/Submission_Strengthening_the_Test_for_Australian_Citizenship_Jun2017_FINAL.pdf

Australian Government Department of Immigration and Citizenship, A. (2012). Afghan Community Profile. Retrieved from https://multicultural.vic.gov.au/images/Submission_Strengthening_the_Test_for_Australian_Citizenship_Jun2017_FINAL.pdf

Batterham, P. J. (2014). Recruitment of mental health survey participants using Internet advertising: content, characteristics and cost-effectiveness. International journal of methods in psychiatric research, 23(2), 184-191. Retrieved from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/mpr.1421

Baker, A. (2016). Dari (Afghan Persian). Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 46(2), 229-234. Retrieved from:  https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/…/core-reader

Timeline Estimate

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Chen, W., Hall, B. J., Ling, L., & Renzaho, A. M. (2017). Pre-migration and post-migration factors associated with mental health in humanitarian migrants in Australia and the moderation effect of post-migration stressors: findings from the first wave data of the BNLA cohort study. The Lancet Psychiatry, 4(3), 218-229. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28161455

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Coombs, T., Burgess, P., Dickson, R., & McKay, R. (2017). Routine Outcome Measurement and the Development of the Australian Mental Health Workforce: The First 25 Years of Implementation Are the Hardest. In the Workforce Development Theory and Practice in the Mental Health Sector (pp. 302-316). IGI Global. Retrieved from:   https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/…mental-health-workforce…developing…/171508

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Cutler, T. L., Reavley, N. J., & Jorm, A. F. (2018). How ‘mental health smart’are you? Analysis of responses to an Australian Broadcasting Corporation News website quiz. Advances in Mental Health, 16(1), 5-18.Retrieved from:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22182365

Krause, J. (2014, May). Afghan Languages (Dari and Pashto) as a Source of Unity Rather Than Division. In Conference on Central Asian Languages and Linguistics (p. 154).Retrieved from:  

https://www.rferl.org/a/1104868.html

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 Shishehgar, S., Gholizadeh, L., DiGiacomo, M., Green, A., & Davidson, P. M. (2017). Health and socio-cultural experiences of refugee women: an integrative review. Journal of immigrant and minority health, 19(4), 959-973.Retrieved from: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0706743717746666

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Wittmayer, J. M., Schäpke, N., van Steenbergen, F., & Omann, I. (2014). Making sense of sustainability transitions locally: how action research contributes to addressing societal challenges. Critical policy studies, 8(4), 465-485. Retrieved from:  https://www.researchgate.net/…/266128502

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Yaser, A., Slewa-Younan, S., Smith, C. A., Olson, R. E., Guajardo, M. G. U., & Mond, J. (2016). Beliefs and knowledge about post-traumatic stress disorder amongst resettled Afghan refugees in Australia. International journal of mental health systems, 10(1), 31.Retrieved from: 

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