Ten awards were given by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic for extraordinary activities of students, especially in the field of volunteering and other activities related to the coronavirus pandemic. Among the winners, there is also a student Veronika Kamenská from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication, BUT, who is behind the successful application “Don’t panic” (Nepanikař).

“Don’t panic” provides quick psychological help for free. This application has 7 modules: depression, anxiety/panic, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, my records, eating disorders and contacts for professional help. The application has already saved more than a hundred lives and registers 120,000 downloads from 151 countries in the world. Last year, the student also received the Gratias Tibi 2020 award for the civic activity for her work. She cooperated with Tomáš Chlubna from the Faculty of Information Technology at BUT on the development of the application, but today “Don’t panic” is a much broader project.

"Covid indirectly forced us to expand “Don’t panic”, so today it is no longer just an application, but we have created a non-profit organization and we have other activities in progress. The main one, which we now devote to full time, is the “Don’t panic” chat and e-mail counselling centre. We generally talk about the fact that it is ok not to be ok and that mental health is just as important as physical health," Kamenská suggested in an interview for the Events at BUT. You can find the whole interview with the awarded student in the current issue of the university magazine Events at BUT (p. 32) and you can also look forward to her in one of the following episodes of the Technically speaking podcast.