by KindMind
Access to mental healthcare… in your pajamas.
What do we do to stay at the top of our game?
Go to the gym, exercise, eat healthy? Why do we see mental health differently?
The way we look at mental health is flawed.
The founders of KindMind are developing an app that allows you to track and improve your mental wellness in a fun and easy way–by framing it as mental fitness. It puts a therapist right in your pocket, and gives you the tools to perform your best all the time.
With KindMind, you can FaceTime with your therapist or psychiatrist from anywhere, and have payment and insurance automated through the app. Don’t have a mental healthcare provider? No problem! KindMind doesn’t just keep clients going back to their therapists, it also connects them with NEW therapists who fit their specific needs. KindMind takes away all the stress of going to see a therapist, and helps you find just what you’re looking for. It becomes so much easier to get to that next session when it’s just a tap away!
Not only does KindMind connect people to therapists and help maintain their connection, it also helps users track their mental wellness on their own. Through the app, users can track their mood on a daily basis to identify mood patterns, discover associations about their mood that might otherwise go unnoticed, and look back on their progress. People already track their steps and calories…it’s time mental health gets added into the wellness equation, too! We aim to not just help people achieve better mental wellness, but also to help end the stigma towards mental health issues. It’s ok to need help and we want to make it easy for everyone to get it.
What makes KindMind different than other apps is that it truly is a one-stop shop for mental wellness needs. We bring everything into one place to make life easier. Maintaining or achieving mental wellness shouldn’t be so difficult! We understand the difficulties of having a busy lifestyle, so we get why mental wellness might not always come first. We want to help change that by offering convenient access to therapy and psychiatry, automated payment and appointments, personalized searching to find clinicians, and fun and innovative mood monitoring.
With KindMind, mood tracking isn’t just informative–it’s fun! Mood tracking is an important element in mental wellness. It helps keep you aware of emotional patterns and enables you to assess whether your treatment is working. With that said, we understand that staying motivated to use mood tracking apps can be a struggle. KindMind addresses this using in-app incentives, like earning emoticons and progress achievements for taking care of yourself! We want to “game-ify” mood tracking, and keep it continually exciting. We also want to connect mood tracking with information from other apps. Open KindMind and it asks you how you felt after that night out at the club, after your workout, or even after your phone call with your mom!
We have long known the benefits of keeping a mood diary or journal and how they promote mental wellness. We want to encourage and nurture this behavior! Every time you track your mood, KindMind gives you the opportunity to make a new entry if desired. Most importantly for treatment, KindMind gives you the option to share entries with your therapist, so that you may discuss it at your next session, or even beforehand. Diary-keeping then becomes not just beneficial to you, but also to the therapeutic relationship.
We understand how stressful it can be to find the right mental health provider. We’re making that process easier by introducing personalized search filters. We put all the necessary tools at your fingertips and present you with informative video profiles that give you a true feel for the mental health professionals available to you! It should not be a mystery who you will be meeting during your first session. We want you to feel comfortable knowing that your provider will likely be a good match.
If you need more information, you can even contact providers within the app and speak to them directly for free. After you have chosen a provider, you can easily move to setting up an appointment. You can put your payment and insurance information directly into the app to facilitate insurance handling, and your provider will not have to worry about getting bogged down by paperwork.
Teletherapy and telepsychiatry are already happening, but finding a provider who offers these services isn’t always easy. We want to make teletherapy available to everyone, as we believe it is the future of mental health treatment. We understand that users might not be able to see their therapist in person every week, or ever. We understand that users might be too busy, bi-coastal, or have financial or physical reasons for not being able to make it into the office. We believe that should not stop someone from achieving great mental health!
Kindmind offers 24/7 community support forums for users. Community support has long been known to help one’s mental health, and we want to foster a safe, supportive atmosphere within the app. Kindmind offers forum topics based on various mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety, and advice & support. Users can create a community profile and share their mood charts with approved friends if desired.
Elijah Bullard has an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University and an M.S. in Computer Science from Fordham University. He has two publications on depression and is leading the team’s vision and progress.
Weiyu Shen has an M.A. in Economics from Boston University and an M.S. in Computer Science from Fordham University. He has three publications in economics and is leading the team’s technology decisions and revenue model.
Elle Bernfeld is a licensed therapist (LMSW) with an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University. She is leading mental health decisions in app development. Elle also uses her B.A. in Theatre to guide the team creatively.
Mariella Sypa is an exceptional programmer completing her B.S. in Computer Science at Fordham University. She is managing operations and keeping our strategies appealing to a young audience.
Steven Sypa has a B.A. in Pre-Law and Business from New York University and is a corporate legal consultant for a Big Four firm. He is managing our legal matters, including drafting of legal documents and assessing legal risk, and advises our business strategy.
Below you will find our monthly expenses. While $27,900 might seem like a lofty goal, we are actually being quite conservative with spending! We are so lucky to have a talented team of co-founders that can do most of the work in-house. We are able to save a lot of money by not needing to pay for other people to create our app. It also gives us more creative control over the end-product, allowing us to stick closer to our dream and vision.
Total monthly cost: $12,600
Total development cost (2 months): $25,200
Total budget with Kickstarter & Payment fees (10%): $27,900
**For every $12,600 we raise, we have another monthly cost covered!**
Facilitating mental health services through our app means operating within the medical, technological, and legal worlds, and we’re prepared to handle related challenges along the way. We want to improve mental health treatment and we need to work with experts from these fields to help us navigate potential issues. Throughout this interdisciplinary collaboration, ethics will remain our priority and guiding light.
One recent development has made our challenges easier– the telemedicine industry is evolving and booming, with particular attention toward app development for health services. The tides of mental health policy are changing and we are at the forefront. As treatment via telehealth becomes more widespread, KindMind’s goal to revolutionize mental healthcare becomes that much closer to realization.
We understand that investing in our Kickstarter requires a certain level of trust in us as individuals and in our abilities. While our bios do illustrate our competence and diverse backgrounds, it is not just our achievements that make us ultimately worthy of your trust. We believe it’s our unwavering passion and love for the project that makes us uniquely suited to create this app. Each of us has our own personal reasons for being passionate about mental health, and we carry those as motivators with us every day. We’ve invested nearly a year of our (unpaid) time into the app and have no plans of stopping should any speed bumps come our way. We know how many people need this app today and will not stop until everyone has access to stigma-free mental healthcare! We hope this soothes any fears, but we are also happy to answer any questions! We appreciate your joining us on this revolutionary journey through the telehealth space.