FEATURE: RECOVERME Nayeem who are also doctors. We met at the University of Sheffield as medical students 7 years ago. I am currently doing an A&E job in London, Minal has recently spent the majority of the year working in Mental Health and Adil is working in General Practice in Birmingham. What was the inspiration behind RecoverMe? In 2017 Minal and I studied at Imperial College London and published medical research on an app that was successful in creating positive behaviour change for those hoping to quit smoking. On the back of that, we met a gentleman in Sheffield who was being treated for depressive and anxiety symptoms by his GP. He had recently split up from his long-term partner, struggling to hold down a job and was contemplating taking his own life. We were fortunate to spend time with him and understand his current situation. He disclosed to us that the reason for him feeling low was due to a gambling addiction. He started betting at the age of 21 when he was at University, occasionally betting on football matches, however this soon led to him placing larger and more frequent bets. When we met him, he was in his mid 20s having lost tens of thousands of pounds over a short period of time. In addition to this we were becoming aware fellow students at our university who were struggling financially having bet away large sums of money with the extra free time and access to money through student loans. As keen medical students at the time we brainstormed and looked at all the available treatment options as well as what the potential for gold standard treatment would be. Through our literature review we found that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) was the most effective treatment for sportsbettingoperator.com
problematic gambling habits and to our dismay at that time over 3 years ago there was only one NHS clinic in the whole of the UK that delivered CBT to manage a gambling addiction. As a result of this and familiarity in the field of mobile apps to create behaviour change, we were inspired to start our journey at RecoverMe. How quick will the RecoverMe App be to install and operate? The official launch date of RecoverMe is the 13th of October. It will be available on both the Apple and Google Play stores. Currently we are at the final stages of development and testing to ensure we are ready for launch. RecoverMe will be available directly to consumers but we expect the majority of users would be referred from organisations like gambling operators, universities, sporting bodies as well as other treatment providers. We are building relationships with leaders in this space to provide most of our users with a free subscription. In terms of pricing we offer great value, the introductory monthly subscription of using RecoverMe is £5.99 and we have discounted the annual subscription greatly for our B2B clientele. How does it work? RecoverMe is a self-help mobile application to support individuals in managing problematic gambling habits. It has been built in collaboration with current problem gamblers, ex-gamblers, psychiatrists and psychologists. RecoverMe is the world’s first app that delivers a structured Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) programme specially for gambling addiction. It does this through engaging audio recordings as well as thought provoking questions. It works by 31
