This is the decade of Mental Health
And here are some of the startups trying to solve the crisis: Earkick - AI Voice Mental Health; Even Mind - continuous tracking for BPD; GratitudePlus - social journaling
We are in a mental health crisis. You don’t have to take my word for it, the Surgeon General said so himself. 1 in 4 Americans have a mental health or addiction issue. And over 60% of them go undiagnosed or untreated - yes, the majority of individuals with a mental health issue aren’t helped; and when they do seek treatment, it is 11 years (on average) after the onset of the symptoms.
if you’re wondering what the starting period is doing in that tweet, you are not alone -
psychiatrists from the APA are wondering what Freduian slip was unintended
Fortunately, the stigma of mental health has begun to fade. Unfortunately, there is a rapid increase in the number of people suffering from mental illness.
Below are a few passionate and helpful-minded entrepreneurs working to solve the crisis.
1 in in 4 Americans have a mental health or addiction issue.
Earkick - AI Voice Recorded Analysis - Karin A. Stephan and Dr. Herbert Bay
Imagine having a real time overview over your mental health. You’d know how ready you are for work, when to take a step back and when to lean all in, all based on your own data. All you have to do is to record a few seconds of your voice and let the AI do the rest. Not only will you get an immediate and context-related feedback, but you’ll also get actionable suggestions to get through the day, no matter how rough things get. And it has ultimate safety - no registration is needed (all data is analyzed and stored on your device). Earkick is radically private - your data is yours and yours alone.
Earkick is a deep tech startup developing an AI driven self-care companion app to track and improve mental health in real time. It offers its enterprise solutions to companies (targeting companies with a remote or hybrid work culture) who want to track and improve workplace mental health, reduce health care costs and drive productivity. It is tackling the annual cost of $450bn in productivity loss due to workplace mental health issues in the US.
Founded by serial entrepreneurs Karin A. Stephan and Dr. Herbert Bay, the company has already raised $1.5m from early Angel and VC investors. The patent-pending technology is already being run in successful pilots with various companies and targeting the ROI of 5X on mental health initiatives.
Here’s their Pitch Deck for their $3m seed round.
Even Mind - Mental Health Monitor for the BPD community - Chris Woods
Even Mind is a mental health monitoring app that helps the 7 millions Americans (or adult Americans) personally track and manage bipolar disorder, a chronic and episodic life-long illness.
Besides the individual struggle, bipolar disorder causes a per patient healthcare spend of $10,000 (and income loss due to untreated symptoms exceeds $40,000!). Despite its prevalence and high cost, there is no product for continuous monitoring like with CGM for diabetes. Instead, treatment decisions depend on a patient’s (general unreliable) ability to recall and summarize symptoms unassisted.
Even Mind takes a new approach and tracks symptoms in real-time during brief daily checkpoints. Combined with passive signals (sleep, activity, etc.), this creates a more objective view of one’s mental health. Users can easily learn from this data directly and/or share it with a clinician. With a 28-day retention rate over 2x the 75th percentile for similar apps (Apple benchmarks), their early users love Even Mind.
Founded by Dartmouth grad and Bridgewater alum Chris Woods, Even Mind is on a mission to improve bipolar disorder management and to make mental healthcare more quantitative.
Interested in making an impact? Please get in touch and check out their deck.
Yes, I just shamelessly plugged my tweet
Gratitude Plus - Social Journaling - Daniel Shaffer & Evan Lodge
Gratitude Plus is a social journaling platform for friends to improve their mental health together with simple wellness tools. The company leverages social accountability to keep users journaling, which leads to deeper relationships while improving mental health.
The impressive founders believe that a fun, multiplayer experience is the key to making mental health more accessible for the millions of gen-z struggling. And the company ha the right team to build this. Daniel Shaffer has built multiple top-10 apps with 1M+ downloads and was a lead iOS engineer at mental health startup Thrive Global. Evan Lodge is a YC alum w/exit and former Head of Product for Vivian (IAC owned healthcare staffing marketplace).
An app for all who want to grow (get it on the app store!), its super passionate users open it 8x/week. They’re growing with 30% referrals and have recently launched a premium paid version.
Daniel and Evan are looking to raise their pre-seed to scale the platform. Check out the app and their deck.
COMING SOON:
