“Economic downturns usually bring on cultural psychosocial depressions” — Dan Seider, Founder of Misu

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought worries and anxiety, and the impact of social distancing and the economic downturn have negatively impacted many people’s mental health in the Bay Area.

With the increase of depression, fear, and loneliness, many people around the globe are turning to meditation and mindfulness apps, digital wellness and fitness solutions, as well as online health services, to cope with the effects of these uncertain times. In turn, many digital health startups have found new clients overnight, and are now playing an ever-growing part in our daily lives.

To shed some light on the topic, I invited Dan Seider, founder of Misu, an automated mood tracker that tracks happiness and anxiety via micro facial expressions throughout the day. Inspired by deep depression and advice from his mental health professionals, Dan taught himself to code and built the app, one of the highest-rated manual mood trackers, to help himself and others keep up the habit of mood tracking, and to advance the state of the art of mental health technology.

1. How are you dealing with the situation on a personal level?

I’ve been a solo founder in the past and worked from home for over a year. It can get hard and lonely… depression and anxiety can suck, especially if there is negative momentum. Fortunately, I picked up many self-care tactics along the way. The past few weeks I’ve been staying physically active (I’ve set up a few accountability workout messenger threads), taking more mood stabilizers as I notice larger shifts in my mood, meditating, and making sure to make a few (digital) social plans throughout the week.

2. How does this situation change your perspectives? — for worse and for better

Unfortunately, this is going to make our already horrible mental health situation worse. Economic depressions usually bring on cultural psychosocial depressions — Spain has seen a 3x increase in the risk of suffering from depression during a recession. On the flip side, there’s already an increase in venture capitalists investing in the mental health space. In Q1 2020, there were an estimated $462 million invested into mental health startups, 2x more than Q1 2019. I expect this to continue increasing relative to the shifts in the market.

Mental health founders are seeing large increases in the adoption of their platforms.

3. What motivates you to keep going?

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder 10 years ago — I’ve struggled with deep depression and anxiety for years — this almost took my life. As I got back on my feet, I told myself I didn’t want anyone else to go through a similar struggle, and I wanted to give back. Looking at most of the system we have in place, it is there to catch people (like me) when we fall. I want a mental health system that catches us before we are even close to the metaphorical edge.

I see a future where consumers like you and me, if we want to, are informed about how any of our actions impact our mental health — imagine knowing how watching that extra episode on Netflix, or 30 minutes more on Twitter will impact our mental health — like mental health nutrition labels.

This would create a herd-like immunity through increased emotional awareness, and save many lives and suffering.

4. What are you currently doing to help?

During the last set of fires in the Bay Area, I ordered an abundance of P95 masks for my community. When this started I sent most of them off to Bay Area hospitals and other places that were hit hard. I’ve been chatting with friends who are going through a tough time, being supportive where I can. I continue to work on my startup, as a mental health crisis is on the way and people will be increasingly in need of tools for their mental health.

5. What are you hopeful about in the future?

I’m hopeful that most of the technologies that we use today (i.e. social media, the media, our phones) will be designed to improve our well-being in the future, or at least reduce the mental health harm they have on us.

This is needed now more than ever since we are consuming viral depressing and anxiety-inducing news on a daily basis. Dozens of members of Congress are attempting to hold social media platforms accountable to the harm they have on our mental health. The challenge is that they don’t have the data. We need data that measures how our activities, including the apps we use impact our mental health, because the social giants aren’t doing it themselves (understandably so).

You can read other interviews with entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley on our Medium channel. If you are an early-stage entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and you want to share your story to inspire others, we would love to hear from you! Please feel free to reach out to me directly at fernanda@samsungnext.com