Buddy

What is it? 

Buddy is a new approach to talking therapy services created by Sidekick Studios. It is a daily digital diary where users can record their mood and what they did that day via SMS. This means that keeping a diary of feelings becomes a low-hassle task that can be accomplished whenever, wherever they are, quickly and discretely. These details are shared with their therapist and feed into their sessions together to help users understand their condition and plan goals to work towards as part of their recovery.

The Buddy project was created with the idea that mental health and therapy services should wrap around the life of the service user, rather than the other way round. Their insight was that the rise in use of mobile phones could offer an opportunity for therapy to work more effectively with people's everyday lives, not just being something somehow apart from the rest of a patient's life. 

The hope is that this will make therapy sessions themselves more useful and effective, and help more people enjoy good mental health more often. The ultimate aim is to speed up recovery through self-management, leading to better outcomes for people and reduced costs for services. Looking ahead Buddy could be adapted for other long-term cognitive conditions where there is a link between lifestyle behaviour, physical health and mental well-being. 

How the idea developed

Buddy grew out of a desire to develop a product that helped mental health patients self-manage their condition. It started out as a radio that connected people to their social networks and let users broadcast their mood. However the team quickly figured out that this format wouldn't work well for users because it was not flexible enough. With support from Nesta, Sidekick refined the idea and made the step of changing the technology to text messaging, which was a better fit with the lifestyles of service users and provided a longitudinal view of their mood. 

The project was part of Nesta's Reboot Britain programme which invested in 10 projects that investigated how collaborative technologies can support innovation in public services. Buddy received £122,000 from Nesta and the South London and Maudsley Foundation Trust have been Sidekick Studio's key clinical partner throughout the programme.

Nesta initially offered funding to develop a working prototype of Buddy during the first phase of Reboot Britain. In the second phase of the programme Sidekick Studios were awarded further funding to support the scaling of Buddy across the country.

Latest news (as at 20 August 2012) 

Buddy is now being rolled out nationally with support from the South London and Maudsley Foundation Trust, the NHS Confederation Mental Health Network and Rethink.  The service is now being used by the North Essex IAPT service, the boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham and Croydon, the Pennines IAPT, Stockport, the North West Military Veterans IAPT, Kent and Medway and a number of other service providers including The Priory and AXA-PPP.

Want to know more?

Adil Abrar, Founder & Chief Sidekick - adil@sidekickstudios.net