With schools increasingly focused on mental health, PsycApps raises Seed round for US expansion

techcrunch.com:

I’ve been tracking PsycApps, a startup that came up with a gamified mental health game ‘eQuoo’, since 2016, and this company – and its founder – is nothing if not persistent in ‘pivoting into the wind’. The last we heard it had been approved by the UK’s National Heath Service and was even distributed by Unilever. And, of course, the after-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic has only created a greater need for startups addressing mental health.

But now it is winning approval from the investment community in the shape of a $1.7 seed capital raise from US-based Morningside Ventures.

Describing itself as an ‘evidence-based gamified mental health game for teens and young adults’, eQuoo is now aiming its platform at the 50% of teens and tweens who self-report struggling with one or more issues of mental health.

PsycApp’s platform offers a mental health intervention game aimed at higher education institutions, many of which are now legally obliged to take care of students’ mental health. And because eQuoo has gone through clinical trials, it’s securing contracts with schools that need that validation in order to offer it to students. In theory, this means that any other platform trying to do the same thing will meet a barrier to entry into this market.

In a statement, Stephen Bruso of Morningside Ventures commented that low engagement in mental health apps is a problem, but he thinks eQuoo has cracked the model: “Digital health interventions will be critical in the way that our society addresses the second, ongoing pandemic of mental health issues. However, designing these interventions to maximize long-term engagement and outcomes will be critical to making a difference. Silja and her team have shown robust engagement and outcomes