Problem: I have some friends who are hesitant to get mental help because of lack of anonymity during the counselling process. This seems like a silly reason to not to be vulnerable with someone but it seemed genuine given the laws around doctor-patient confidentiality in my country. (they are not air tight).
I want to know if there are tools out there that can enable anonymized video conferencing (by use of avatars or by other methods) so that the initial friction to talk to a mental health expert are somewhat reduced.
I am also open to hear any other suggestions on how to convince someone to seek help when mental health is still not a well understood topic in my country. For what it's worth I am from India.
EDIT: fixed formatting and grammar
All the parts are known, the same techniques used to put bunny ears on a head can be used to blur or replace faces and it's possible to animate avatars on static backgrounds with the physical movements captured in video. Audio can easily be manipulated to mask a voice (but would need to be randomized to minimize reverting it). Speech-to-text and text-to-speech could be utilized to mask a voice as well, though it introduces some latency and would mask various vocal cues a therapist listens for.
This could also be used to minimize prejudice with a therapist unable to know age or gender for example. But those can be important aspects of analysis as well.
So I've got no ready made solutions for you, but good luck.
Turn off the camera.