In the year I’ve been following PsycApps since 2016 with a mental health game called eQuoo, and this company – and its founder – are nothing if not persistent “tossing into the wind.” Last we heard it was approved by the UK National Health Service and even distributed by Unilever. And of course, the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic has only created more interest in mental health startups.
But now it is gaining acceptance from the investment community after raising $1.7 million in seed capital from US-based Morningside Ventures.
Billing itself as an “evidence-based mental health game for teens and young adults,” eQuoo is now targeting the platform at the 50% of teens and tweens who self-report with one or more mental health issues.
The PsychApp platform offers a mental health intervention game aimed at higher education institutions, many of which now have a legal duty to look after students’ mental health. And because eQuoo has passed clinical trials, it’s securing contracts with schools that need that certification to provide it to students. In theory, this means that any platform trying to do the same will meet a barrier to entry in this market.
In a statement, Stephen Brusseau of Morningside Ventures commented that low participation in mental health apps is a problem, but thinks eQuoo has cracked the model: “Digital health interventions will be critical to how our society addresses the second and ongoing pandemic.” Mental health issues. However, designing these interventions to maximize long-term engagement and outcomes will be critical to making a difference. Silja and her team have demonstrated strong participation and outcome data in large clinical studies.
Clinical psychologist and founder Silja Litvin – along with co-founder Vanessa Hirsch-Angus – points out that 70 percent of 16- to 28-year-olds are casual gamers. Game mechanics.
EQuoo’s edtech appeal – he says – is that high schools, colleges and universities are legally required to protect the health of their students, and that means mental – as well as physical – health. In the UK, Ofsted, the UK’s education watchdog and assessor of schools and colleges, has made it a requirement for schools and colleges to include a “resilience and personal development program” in their curriculum before achieving top status.
EQuoo is the only tool covered by Ofsed that has clinical trials that say it “has a positive effect on student resilience, anxiety and depression.”
A regional college and Paragon Skills, which cover around 20,000 students and apprentices across the UK, are two of eQuoo’s newest customers.
Speaking to me on a call, Litvin explained that his startup has seen significant interest since switching from a short-term play to a long-term play, a move Morningside’s investment has balanced.
We’ve completely rebooted the game, adding multiple stories, an in-app arcade, and an in-app chatbot to keep you safe. We went from five weeks to 52 weeks. We have all mental health related in-app toys with lots of games and lots of exercises,” she said.
“With this funding, we’re making sure it never ends. You can use the game for the rest of your life if you want, that’s not a problem because it’s all about personal development. So it’s not just about solving mental health,” he said.
I explained to her that selling to the education market is difficult, especially for beginners.
She protested: “Ofsted has published a reform saying that if a school is to be fully rated, it must have a resilience and personal development product programme. We are the only evidence-based, designed for that young age bracket, with clinical trials to prove its effectiveness in recovery and personal development… Schools are scrambling to find a program and most programs are not evidence-based. And they’re not as scalable as eQuoo.
She added that Morningside has lines at “every major university in the United States,” which will help it expand in North America.
Litvin added that the company had to “run on fumes” for a while before securing the seed round: “We’re down. We haven’t paid ourselves for a few months. With this money, we can go into growth mode.”
