The invention of cutting-edge emotion recognition technology is spearheading the rapidly emerging field of Augmented Mental Health—with potential to radically revolutionize the mental health care industry.  Combining increasingly affordable smart mental health monitoring technologies with the real-time provision of evidence-based therapy to treat mental disorders and improve well-being, Augmented Mental Health systems allow for previously unobtainable levels of personalized, smart, efficacious, and on-time care. ​

Mental health care policies and practices failing to meet demands is placing an immense economic and social burden on the planet, costing trillions each year, where the incremental indirect costs of untreated depression in terms of lost productivity is the biggest offender.

The latest solution, Augmented Mental Health with advanced mental health monitoring and therapeutic intervention, has the capacity to yield unmatched, cost-effective improvements for the currently extortionate direct and indirect costs of untreated depression that cripples lives and communities world over.  ​

When Haris and I started our startup journey a few years ago, we had both recently struggled with our Mental Health. I was recovering from a depressive burnout after overworking myself, and he was having panic attacks out of the blue. Both of us, decided to start psychotherapy, and quickly realized that psychotherapy -although extremely helpful, and probably the best investment we’ve done in our lives- was happening in an outdated way and needed to be modernized.

We also realized that we were not alone in this. Mental health disorders are on the rise. The numbers speak for themselves. According to the World Health Organization, close to half a billion people globally suffer for some sort of mental health illness. One in five people in the US today are dealing with an illness that impacts their mental state. To put it in context, this statistic outnumbers the entire population of California. Today depression is affecting 300 million people worldwide. What’s worse is that the National Institute of Mental Health estimates that by 2030, depression is expected to be the leading cause of disease burden globally.
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While mental health disorders are on the rise, so is the demand for mental health care services. But, the current healthcare system can not keep up. Mental health disorders cost $467 billion annually to the US economy. On top of that, behavioral health issues are a key predictor of high costs. Among the population suffering from chronic disease, those with a mental illness cost between to 2 and 3 times more than those without. Care providers have not yet adequately responded to the burden of mental health disorders while poor quality of care continues to be a problem for many patients who receive treatment. What are the culprits you might ask? Several reasons.

Thanks to technological advances in emotion recognition, augmented mental health systems that objectively monitor and improve mental health and wellbeing, represent the ultimate multi hit tool to maximize employee and organization productivity, generating substantial savings by targeting mental health, occupational stress, and burnout.