Why Founders Need to Invest More into Their Mental Health

Living the startup life is exactly what it’s made out to be: exhilarating, excruciating, entertaining and exhausting.

Startup members really do rush around as if their hair is on fire when a system crashes or bugs infest a live tech product. They really do have superfluous meetings and spend their first few dimes on company t-shirts. And yes, they do also like to party. After all, every achievement was hard-earned and most startup teams are young enough to handle work after a night out.

Despite all this, pretty much any founder you speak to likely believes deeply in their product and wants to add value to their customers’ lives, whether the product is an electric back scratcher or a humanitarian first aid kit. The path from idea conception to a fully developed product is long and painful with a steep learning curve, plastered with rejection and hard work. It is impossible to build a product without getting very attached to it and when the going gets hard, entrepreneurs struggle.

Research shows that entrepreneurs are one of the most vulnerable groups for mental health issues, reporting up to 30% more depression and 12% more substance abuse than non-entrepreneurs. The positive aspects of running a startup, like the freedom, autonomy, and excitement, can cushion the blow of some suffering that comes along with mental health struggles. However, the deep pain of going through depression is seldom manageable for the affected.

If we were to cynically ignore the personal devastation that goes hand-in-hand with mental illness and only focus on the effect it has on businesses, we would see that the mental illness comes with a long trail of consequences: the founder may lose their company, the team their jobs, the investors, their capital and the customers their product. This, of course, adds to the personal suffering all around.

This, alongside the wish that no one should have to suffer mental illness, highlights the necessity of mental health care and prevention within the startup community. It should be our goal to give every founder the tools they need to build resilience and manage stress in a healthy way, recognize mental health issues when they occur and know what to do when they or a team member needs mental health care. With eQuoo, the emotional fitness game, we are harnessing the excitement of the gaming industry to design fun, research-based mobile games that build resilience and give our players the psychological skills needed to deal with emotional and mental stressors.

eQuoo works beautifully alongside other mobile mental health solutions like Sleepio, Calm, and Fitbit to address the growing mental health crisis. Apps have the opportunity to reach over 75% of the population with affordable, convenient and life-enhancing interventions, and are already a daily part of some founders, just not enough quite yet.

If you are an entrepreneur, a start-up founder, an investor or simply someone who wants to invest in their mental wellbeing, there are a few simple but powerful things you can do to support your ‘psychological immune system’:

1. Make sure you sleep enough. Sleep deprivation is both a leading cause and a symptom of depression. Screen-time right up to sleeping is detrimental to falling asleep and the quality of your sleep. Recommended is 1–2 hours offline before going to sleep, as well as going to sleep early enough: the recommended average time is 11 pm. If the tech program your company is based on isn’t crashing, the probability that you’re adding value to your company with an all-nighter is quite low. A rested and balanced you will be much more helpful.
2. Keep your lizard brain happy. Stress management is crucial for decision making, relationships and anxiety. We have probably all heard that our brain can’t differentiate whether we’re being chased by a saber-tooth lion or late to an appointment with a VC partner: it floods our bodies with stress hormones and tries to activate our flight or fight response. The best way we can regulate our stress response is with conscious breathing. Four seconds of breathing in, four seconds of holding our breath and 8 seconds of breathing out will lower our heart rate variability to a healthy level.
3. Process your past. If you are lucky enough to afford a therapist, then go see one. We’re all lugging around unhelpful emotional strategies we once developed, mostly while we were still children. People-pleasing may have been the only way to navigate your family relationships back when you were 6, but it’s a very bad habit when you’re trying to negotiate terms with your investors. Going through therapy will be one of the most empowering things you can do for yourself.
4. Find your tribe. Communities, friendships, and support groups will be the thing that gets you through dark days, shows you that you’re not alone and allows you to get advice and help from people who have been there themselves. Whether it’s guerilla knitting, spinning or the local AA, the sense of belonging and connections is what we humans need.

Silja Litvin is the psychologist, founder, and CEO of PsycApps, developer of the multi-award winning eQuoo — the Emotional Fitness Game. Her Techstars portfolio company uses gamification and psychology to help people help themselves.