The idea that people and especially, family and close friends, of affected individuals should have complete knowledge about that mental disorder emerged from an experience while helping my close friend with mental disorder. Even after the treatment ran its course successfully, I was bewildered at the amount of social stigma in the society. Many years of experience in Visual Effects Technology and academic knowledge of philosophy gave me the idea of combining these elements with psychiatry, based on it I successfully presented my 1st research paper in the field of mental health in UNT, Texas, USA, May’11. I set my goal to become a mental health professional, specializing in “Clinical Psychology“. My research continued ahead and contributed in adult mental health problems and accordingly I presented papers in China, Hong Kong, Australia and India. My research interest in memory and cognitive impairments that connects with neuropsychology has been cultivating with the clinical practice and innovative research project development in the field of clinical investigations and psychological and cognitive rehabilitation. Since 2011, a diagnostic tool, titled UMACE (Universal Memory and Cognitive Exam) has been tested on more than 350 samples comprising normal (literate and illiterate), psychiatric and neurological patients rendering substantial quantitative and qualitative data. In an ambitious attempt to empower and support people through innovative methods, the creator of UMACE, Mangal Kardile, a researcher from the City of Nashik in India, seeks to further improve this existing tool to analyze memory and cognitive impairment of the visually impaired population around the globe.
285 million people are estimated to be visually impaired worldwide: 39 million are blind and 246 have low vision. About 90% of the world's visually impaired live in low-income settings (Visual impairment and blindness Fact Sheet, WHO, N°282, 2014). One out of every three blind people in the world lives in India (Anugraha Drishtidaan,2013, http://www.anugrahadrishtidaan.org/Blindness-Global-&-Indian-Scenario.htm)
Further the researcher has been developing a tool for visually impaired population, named as UMACE-VIP (UMACE- Visually Impaired) to detect memory and cognitive impairments as India shoulders the largest burden of global blindness, about 15 million across the country (38 million visually impaired worldwide) with 30000 new cases being added each year. The 75% of these cases are of avoidable blindness, but India has acute shortage of optometrists, while India needs 40,000 optometrists, it has only 8,000 (http://www.netradaan.com/blind-statistics-india.php). The global population about 38 million persons at present who are blind and, by definition, cannot walk about unaided. They are usually in need of vocational and/or social support.
