May 20, 2021
Masawa Minute 28
When AI meets psychedelics | Brain Capital is the next big thing | + More!
This is the Masawa Minute — mental wellness, social impact, and impact investing snippets on what we’re pondering + where you can get active.
In this newsletter, you’ll read some thoughts about the prospects for the future of mental health and the growing market opportunity that it presents. The change is happening, and we’re slowly but steadily shifting towards a world that centers (mental) wellbeing. One day we’ll get there, as long as we believe in this vision.
Get Active!
👏 Attend
Money Talks: Money, new currencies and blockchain
Our friends at ConsciousU are hosting another edition of “money talks,” a live panel discussion on all things related to money. In the upcoming edition, taking place on January 25th at 12:00 PM CET, they will explore the relationship between money, new currencies, and the role that blockchain can play in the future.
The panel will feature outstanding speakers, including Alessandra Sollberger, a founder of Top Tier Impact, a global private network of impact investors and impact entrepreneurs. Alessandra has been investing in the blockchain and biotech sectors since graduating from Oxford in 2012. Another panelist will be Stephen DeMeulenaere, a Complementary Currency Resource Center founder, a fellow at Qoin, and an Advisory Board Member of the New Money Systems group at the Lifeboat Foundation. See you there!
📙 Learn
CU*money, a learning program that guides you to learn and talk about money and become conscious of your relationship with it, is back for another round. If you’re ready to once and for all quit worrying about money, join the course where you’ll dive deep into what keeps us trapped in old paradigms surrounding money and build the skills needed to envision and co-create a prosperous future.
We at Masawa have already done the program and loved it. It also helped us learn more about the thought process of both our funders and the startup teams that we support in our work. If you’re interested, be sure to check it out before registration closes on January 28th. The program starts on January 30th. Don’t miss this opportunity!
What we’re reading…
☀️ A brighter future for mental health
We can all agree that last year drew a lot of attention to the gaping holes in our society’s fabric, the critical lack of response to the mental health crisis being among them. The statistics make the future look quite bleak. However, it’s at least partly up to us how it is going to turn out.
When enough people believe in a particular version of a future, the possibility of it becoming a reality grows tremendously. Therefore, it’s our responsibility to create a vision of a future that we wish to live in and take an active role in shaping it. Investors, startup founders, mental health advocates, and practitioners all have stakes in envisioning and therefore building the future of mental health.
We are already starting to see a much-needed shift in the way mental health is regarded – from an emphasis on treating mental illness to promoting mental wellness through the development of psychological abilities and emotional resilience. And it’s only the beginning with more and more businesses and individuals joining to leave their mark on the future of mental health as we type this. So maybe the future of mental health isn’t so gloomy after all, at least as long as we have a vision of positive change to work towards.
Envisioning a brighter future for mental health
🖇 Mentally friendly workplace — the new normal?
The latest news from the mental health startup world — Spill, a British startup that provides remote mental health support for companies via Slack, has just announced raising €2.2 million in their latest round.
This is one of many examples proving that the demand for workplace mental health support is booming. Spill has grown from 0 to 100+ paying companies with names like Typeform, Bulb, and Depop among them in less than 12 months. These companies now can offer their employees a video session or a chat with a qualified therapist, as well as a selection of mental health support tools and content that’s just a few clicks away.
Spill has already received some impressive feedback. Among the users who participated in the course of six therapy sessions, it was reported to alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety more than either NHS therapy or a course of antidepressants. It serves as a reminder that there are many ways to improve mental wellbeing beyond medication and in-person therapy and that there’s a vast potential for innovation in mental health. We’re excited to see what comes next.
💊 When AI meets psychedelics
We can’t consider the future of mental health without mentioning the impact of AI and psychedelic drugs, emerging big trends that have the power to disrupt mental health care as we know it. In this case, we’re talking about both in one — a study published last month in the Neuroscience of Consciousness has discovered how AI can hallucinate like an actual brain on psychedelics.
This is valuable because such models can be of great help in illustrating visual effects of psychedelics with high accuracy as well as conceptualizing potential biological mechanisms of integrating the information into conscious experience.
Psychedelic drugs are currently explored as a treatment in neurotech, biotech, health care, pharmaceutical, and life sciences. Alongside that, angel investors and venture capitalists are funding the emerging startups and research centers that investigate drugs in the context of a variety of mental health disorders. It makes sense that the AI industry is stepping up as well. While AI and psychedelics are primarily different domains, they are both gaining popularity and have the potential to change global mental health for the better in the not-so-distant future.
AI Neural Network Mimics the Human Brain on Psychedelics
🪁 Innovations that will transform mental health
We have already established that mental health can and will be transformed by technology innovations. 2020 was an incredible year for mental health startups, with the venture capital industry bringing $1.8 billion into the market. The majority of innovations have focused on increasing access to mental health care, which is important, with more than half of people unable to receive the treatment they need. Yet, meaningful change also depends on innovations that increase engagement, integration with primary care and focus on quality.
To innovate in these areas successfully and therefore achieve a significant change in global mental wellness, companies have to overcome several barriers. First, they need to establish a reimbursement system. As the healthcare landscape shifts towards value-based care, tools are required to measure quality meaningfully. Another potential barrier is a lack of a framework for regulation. Finally, it’s essential to earn the public’s trust. People tend to distrust big tech companies, a sentiment fuelled by an investment culture that pushes for fast endless growth to satisfy investors.
There is ample opportunity for innovations in mental health. This need can be met, and the state of global mental health can improve significantly, but only with the right focus and incentives to ensure success.
Startups should focus on innovations that truly improve mental health
🧠 Brain Capital is the solution we need
Brain Capital refers to a form of capital relevant to a global economy where brain skills and brain health are leading contributors. Brain skills include self-control, creativity, mindfulness, compassion, altruism, systems thinking, critical thinking, and more, and these skills are all dependent on mental health. Investing in Brain Capital can enhance performance and impact at the individual, organizational, national, and global levels. At the global level, many of the challenges society is dealing with — climate change, injustice, inequality, and so on — require collaborative problem solving and other skills that investing in Brain Capital would help develop.
The economic importance of mental healthcare, the immense benefits of optimizing Brain Capital, and its positive externalities inspire businesses to take action. As Psychiatric Times put it, “a focus on Brain Capital will set up a synergistic cycle resulting in a significantly better society and economy.” Based on these arguments, a group of experts recently proposed a Brain Capital Grand Strategy to build on and reorient the global economy around optimizing for higher Brain Capital. It includes a policy-focused approach and a Brain Capital Investment Plan that leverages traditional (venture capital, grants) and modern capital sources.
Experts and businesses alike are starting to align on the benefits that investing in mental health, resilience, and brain skills will bring to everyone. We’re thrilled to be a part of this shift to a mental wellbeing-focused economy. It’s the only way to move forward and face the problems we’re currently facing.
Move Over Data, Brain Capital is the New Oil
✨ Masawa Thoughts
As we look out to the rest of the year and the next years, we need to place some bets on the future of mental wellness and act on those bets. (That is, after all, our business… ) Some questions we’ve been pondering include:
- How will the stigma surrounding mental health evolve?
- How does the workplace of the future promote resilience?
- How will novel technologies like digital therapeutics, AI, Brain-Computing Interface (BCI), and gene therapy affect how mental health services are accessed and enhanced?
Whether you’re an investor, startup founder, mental healthcare practitioner, or advocate, we all have stakes in envisioning the future of mental health. How do you see the future of mental health?
💭 In Closing
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Give someone a big [virtual] hug today + take care of each other! 🤗😘
Gabija works as a Marketing & Communications Coordinator at Masawa. She lets her vision of a more just, sustainable, equitable world guide Masawa’s story and inform the work towards transforming global mental wellness to make it accessible and accepted.
