MXit hosts live substance abuse support
Ahead of Drug Awareness Week, Reconstructed Living Lab (RLabs) has stepped up its support for substance abuse by creating a live counselling portal on mobile social network MXit. The service is aimed at South African youths who are in need of substance abuse counselling.
The RLabs portal, called Angel, is available free of charge to all MXit users and offers both support and information on varying degrees of drug abuse. Twelve counsellors are available to offer MXit users support daily between 3pm and 6pm.
The information available includes description and affects of drugs and substances such as tik, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, alcohol and even cigarettes. It will not only helps substance users, but their friends and family to understand the levels of dependency and effects against a symptom check-list per drug.
Once this information is obtained, users can speak to a counsellor, or ‘Angel’, who is most frequently an ex-addict or rehabilitated substance abuser who understands exactly what the abuser is going through.
“This is the exciting part of the programme,” says Marlon Parker, who heads up RLabs and who has already helped over 50 000 youths. “It becomes a lot more powerful when combating substance abuse, when it’s driven by community members themselves. The fact that substance abusers can talk to people that were in the same situation is what drives the success of the programme.
“Our aim is to be able to reach, and help as many South African youths as possible, and so it makes sense to use a platform that is recognised and trusted amongst a very large number of South Africans. MXit has more than 20-million users and is completely committed to helping youth, so it makes sense for this to be the home of such an important mobile initiative.”
The ‘Angel’ feature also offers live advice and counselling for youths that are physically or mentally abused, suffer from depression, stress, HIV/Aids and those who are finding it difficult to cope with difficult situations, including debt.
“This free counseling service was created to reconstruct communities through innovation. RLabs uses social media to help community members affected by substance abuse and gang violence to tell their stories, and to use those stories to share hope with other people who have similar experiences. For MXit and RLabs, this is but the beginning – the future will see us taking this service to other countries too,” says Parker.
Statistics from the National Medical Research Council (MRC) – 2008 Youth Risk Behaviour Survey, released in April show:
* 98% of tik addicts who seek help in South Africa come from the Western Cape;
* 7.4% of grade 8-11 learners have used mandrax;
* 6.7% of grade 8-11 learners have used cocaine;
* 6.2% of grade 8-11 learners have used heroin;
* 6.6% of grade 8-11 learners have used tik;
* 12.7% of grade 8-11 learners have used marijuana (dagga);
* 21% of grade 8-11 learners are current smokers; and
* 49.6% of grade 8-11 learners have used alcohol.
MXit users can add the Angel feature by going to Tradepost / MXit Mix / Education and clicking to add the Angel icon.
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