Clearing the way to clearing your mind 🧠
How mindDay is changing the way we manage our mental health…
"By the mere appearance of the Other, I am put in the position of passing judgment on myself as on an object, for it is as an object that I appear to the Other."
Whether you have used your various lockdown to read Sartre, the challenges of the past year at least had the silver lining of moving the spotlight on the issue of mental health and well-being.
To help the fight against taboo, Boris, Grégoire and their 5 co-founders have created mindDay, a service to help embed mental health care into daily life practices.
Thank you very much to the two of you for taking the time to share today. Let us start with a not-so-simple question: why choose that topic? Do people wrongly assume that there must be some personal history there?
BP : Of course, there is personal history. My history with entrepreneurship, to begin with. I founded a first company called Sport Heroes back in 2014, whose mission was to give everyone the motivation to move on a daily basis, to help people live better by taking care of their physical health.
For seven years I've observed with a lot of interest all the things that were happening in the wellness sector, in France and in the US in particular, and I've seen the rise of concerns regarding mental health issues.
GN : And it's far more than personal observations. According to the WHO, in developed countries, 1 in 5 people experience severe mental health problems each year and 74% do not know how to treat them. We go to the doctor regularly for physical health check-ups, but we barely do anything for our mental health.
“[…] 1 in 5 people experience severe mental health problems each year and 74% do not know how to treat them.”
It's hard to argue that by creating sports communities, you were already quite involved in mitigating mental health issues.
Still, how did you make sure that the transition from one project to the other would be momentous enough?
BP : I tried to figure out why it is so difficult today to treat mental health issues. It appeared that the problems were:
First, bad image. Mental health is still taboo (especially in France). We don't talk about it much, we don't know how to correctly identify problems, we don't dare to talk about it. We cure when cases are serious, but there is no preventive action.
Second, orientation. It is very difficult to understand the differences between the practitioners, whether you should contact a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a coach, a hypnotist...
Finally, high cost. The average price of a session is 80€, and it is not reimbursed by social security. 30% of people affected wouldn’t be able to pay for help, even if they needed it.
That's why we created mindDay a solution brought to you by your company, in a B2B2C model, to give you access to:
Digital tracks, that combines articles, videos, exercises and tests in a coherent way, on various topics related to mental wellness such as "Put an end to sleeping issues", "How to prevent burnout", "Manage your stress", etc.
The possibility to book an orientation meeting with one of our Care Managers, a 20-30 minutes video meeting to assess your situation and challenges. After the meeting, our Care Manager will match you with one of our minder, that's how we called our carefully selected practicians (both coaches and psychotherapists), that fits best with your profile and with whom you can initiate individual sessions.
GN : And since the beginning, we've been very careful to be accurate on a scientific level. Two of our co-founders are experienced psychotherapists, a third one has been an executive coach for more than 20 years. Their role is to ensure we are building a solution that is really solving mental health issues.
Unfortunately, it appears that recent lockdowns have acted as something of a catalyst regarding mental health issues…
But is it that unfortunate? I imagine that more than a few of us do have latent issues that could sleep for some time before a particular crisis brings them to the surface, what is your take on that?
BP : It's true the covid crisis has been a catalyst. Cases of depression have doubled in comparison before/after the pandemic, for instance. But with mindDay our goal is not only to treat people that are in mental distress, but also to act preemptively.
We all face challenges, we all face ups and downs, and we should all take care of our mental wellness, the same way we are taking care of our physical wellness by exercising or eating healthy.
In fact, the average delay between the time someone experiences mental health problems and the time he/she would see a specialist is 14 years in France! 14 years.
GN : And that's one of our greatest challenge. To break the taboos, to make people realize their mental wellness is a serious concern and that they can act to prevent bigger issues. Most of the existing solutions on the market today are emergency telephone lines and those have usage rates <0,5%...
“The average delay between the time someone experiences mental health problems and the time they would see a specialist is 14 years in France!”
We have talked much about the preliminary planning, but rolling out a product is always a harrowing operation.
Did you encounter issues related to the taboo around the mental health topic when you launched?
BP : Actually, the first feedback from the field has exceeded our expectation! We've seen >50% of the employees to whom we've offered our solution take an appointment with our Care Manager and initiate individual sessions with our minders! That's huge and reveals a real need that was not covered for those employees.
That's quite reassuring to see that people embrace the means to take care of unseen problems…
But let not this talk of your social merits make us forget that you are still a business. Would your target companies be strictly motivated by the CSR aspects of your solution?
BP : Obviously, it's also in companies' interest to help their employees get through their mental issues.
It's been proven that employees with a clear mind are also more productive, more present and more loyal to a company. Most of the time, our targets are HR departments. For all companies we offer a 12€/employee/month package that includes:
unlimited access to all our digital content ;
unlimited access to our chat ;
1 orientation meeting/year with our Care Manager
3 individual sessions/year with our minders.
GN : And of course we offer dedicated support to HR teams. Although everything on mindDay is strictly confidential and anonymous (in no way HR or management teams will know who is using our services and the content of the exchanges with our minders) we provide HR departments with critical data at a global scale such as a mental wellness score for the company, the main issues people are facing in the company, the level of interest, the level of satisfaction, etc.
“It's been proven that employees with a clear mind are also more productive, more present and more loyal to a company.”
Well, now I hope that your solution will spread before most of us reach the end of our 14-year grace period.
How can we know more?
Go check our website, and send us a message at boris@mindDay.com or gregoire@mindDay.com for further information!
Thanks again, see you around!
