Mental health problems—and the technologies that target them—come in all shapes and sizes. There are ‘mental wellness’ products such as Calm and Headspace. On the more extreme side of things there are Cerebral, BetterHelp and, for the most part, marketplaces for actual card-carrying therapists. If you have more moderate mental health issues, there are players like Noom ($657.3m raised) with NoomMood, NASDAQ-listed Talkspace with Lasting and Youper ($3.5m raised) for self-directed CBT therapy.
There are also chatbots in the CBT field such as Woebot ($123.3M raised) and journals such as Alan Mind using CBT.
A place in this ‘mild mental health’ problem is also Bloom, a New York-based digital mental health “self-medication” startup that can help with mild to moderate mental health problems.
The startup says its users will become their “own therapist” using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) via video self-therapy sessions to address stress, anxiety and sleep problems. All sessions are designed by Dr. Seth Gillihan, author of CBT and Bloom’s Therapy and CBT.
It has now secured an $8M seed round led by Berlin-based VC Target Global. Also participating are Elysian Park Ventures, AngelPad and Sequoia Scout, as well as founders such as Scott Chacon (GitYouTube), Dominic Richter (HelloFresh), Niklas Jansen (Blinkst), Roland Greinke (Dubsmash), Joshua Cornelius and Mehmet Yilmaz (Freeletics), Ryan Bubinski. (Codecdemy), Maria Nurislamova (Scentbird). So Angel’s beautiful European band line.
“Bloom is doing to therapy what Calm and Headspace did to meditation – making it affordable, accessible, mainstream and everyday,” Leon Muller, CEO and founder of Bloom, said in a statement.
He said he and co-founder Daniel Lohse got the idea for Blub after they moved to New York last year and each tried to find therapists.
