Grace Gutierra

I would be helpful to bridging the gap, especially for younger people who are more versatile and live digitally.

My family and I are survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

And living as refugees in Uganda and elsewhere, we experienced a lot of mental challenges that arose from our experiences with the war, but also just the hardness of living as refugees in a country that's not your own.

I remember being diagnosed with all sorts of things.

However, care was not present and it was not consistent.

Especially at a time before digital help was available.

And so when I started receiving care, which was very recently, as recent as 2018, a combination of things helped me.

But a big thing that helped was finding community.

digitally and also finding support digitally because, as you may know, Rwanda is really trying hard and has helped the survivors get support, get mental health care, but we're still under-resourced and there's still very few psychiatrists and therapists

for a population of 13 million.

These digital tools and this digital mental health care would be helpful to bridging the gap, especially for younger people who are more versatile and live digitally more than our population, our generation.

A lot of young people are going to AI for questions, for support, to heal their loneliness.

And they're using it as a tool in their everyday life in a way that I don't think I've ever seen before.

And so with such power, of course, comes great responsibility.

We don't have an idea of how unregulated the data sharing is, especially for AI, for the AI space.

And we're still learning about AI itself.

Governments are just now starting to think about AI regulations for populations, especially since some cases are coming up about misuse of AI for mental health care leading to drastic situations.

So with Wellcome as a consultant, I was brought on to the MHRA's ANAISES collaboration with Wellcome to think about regulating mental health tools

and digital devices.

And we truly believe that lived experience should be part of it because we are the service users.