With one-quarter of the world population crammed in the region, major depressive disorder, which is still the third-leading cause of disability worldwide, also affects Southeast Asia.

Most patients with mental illness do not receive any treatment. The situation is especially alarming in low-resource settings, where the treatment gap can be as high as 90 per cent.

According to this research, this gap can be attributed to several reasons, including low governmental priority for mental health, which is reflected in delays in developing national-level mental health policies or legislation protecting the human rights of people with mental health problems. Another important contributor to this gap is the lack of both financial and human resources.

Fast-forward to today, there has been a significant movement and awareness raised around the issue. Many startups from the region emerge, offering solutions and platforms to target the 73 per cent people in the region that identify as stress and anxiety issues, according to “The Well Economy: APAC Edition,” a recent report by JWT Intelligence.

The report stated that changing attitudes to health and wellness around Asia Pacific factors into the awareness surrounding the issue. The report, which was based on a survey of 2,500 consumers in five countries (China, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, and Australia), found that mental health is top of mind across all generations with 71 percent of those surveyed associate health with mental health, more than the 68 percent who associate health with overall physical condition.

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Add this to the recent worldwide release of Todd Phillips’ Joker. The mental health awareness seemed to have reached another height, in particular in Southeast Asia, with social posts flooding the timeline with hashtag #MentalHealthAwarenessDay on October 10.

People buzz on social media about how “good people being wronged by society turns into mentally ill people” as the basic idea of mental illness while it’s far-reaching, showing how little education about mental health the society has.

These eight startups are based in Southeast Asia, and each comes out as bringing mental health issues to the surface, finally shine a light on the otherwise overlooked problem in today’s fast-changing, overexposed society.

Riliv, Indonesia

Riliv was bred in the second-largest city in Indonesia, Surabaya, and one of the very first few to address the mental health issue so in the country. Coming from Audrey Maximillian Herli, the company’s CEO and co-founder, Riliv was an idea built upon a piece of data from the World Health Organisation that said one person kills themselves every 40 seconds.

Speaking to e27 in 2018, Herli explained that Riliv works by allowing users to sign up and immediately get connected to an on-duty psychologist, matched with the problems profiled by the user. Both the user and the psychologist -the Expert Reliever- would agree on a date to have an online counseling session for an hour.

Riliv, who were in Google Business Group Story Search’s top four finalists in 2017, intends to become a safe place for people to talk with the professionals.

Save Yourselves, Indonesia

Also hailed from Indonesia, Save Yourselves offers a web chat platform for paid counseling for people with mental illness.

The startup was started by sisters Indri Mahadiraka and Riva Respati. Aside from the paid counseling service, Save Yourselves also offers a free trial in the first minutes of the session.

In the past, Save Yourselves have received startup awards in the Health and Lifestyle category of Vertica as Asia’s top six. It was also one of the six category winners in Echelon Asia 2017’s TOP100 Fight Club Qualifiers.

Kalm, Indonesia

Focussing on the importance of sharing and telling your story for mental health, Kalm is next in line coming from Indonesia.

Bringing the same concept as the first two, the startup offers an app-based counseling service. Kalm also puts the offline effort in raising awareness through hosting talkshow, B2B collaborations, and other events.

The startup was founded by Lukas Limanjaya, Angela Widjaja, and Karina Negara as a way for people to talk to someone reliable in the psychology field and get positive feedback.

Naluri, Malaysia

Naluri is a B2B platform that connects employees or policy-holders with health psychologists, seeking to support the journey towards a healthy lifestyle.

Inspired by the loss of someone dear from a preventable chronic disease, Naluri was co-founded in mid-2017 by ex-iFlix CEO Azran Osman-Rani alongside Dr. Jeremy Ting and Dr. Hariyati Abdul Majid.

Naluri provides personalised coaching and uses evidence-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Motivational Interviewing techniques to strengthen users’ mental resilience and resolve to achieve and sustain better health outcomes such as weight loss, better stress management, or reduction in blood pressure or blood sugar levels.

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As a B2B platform, Naluri also works with insurers, employers, and hospitals to offer a health psychology-based preventive health programme for at-risk policyholders and employees and rehabilitative programme for chronic illness patients.

Naluri’s users are also able to access the chat feature to connect them with a certified dietitian, medical advisor, executive coach, fitness coach, and a peer support group. The platform also includes a photo food journal, thought journal, weekly planner, and a weight monitoring feature.

In 2018, the startup received US$250,000 in a seed funding round from Singapore-based healthcare analytics company BioMark and 500 Startups’ Southeast Asia-focussed fund 500 Durians.

In July 2019, the startup raised US$1.5 million in an oversubscribed pre-Series A round of funding, led by Global Founders Capital, a Berlin-based VC firm run by Rocket Internet Co-founder Oliver Samwer.

Mosia, Vietnam

Mosia was one of the TOP100 contenders this year from Vietnam. Mosia is an application that allows professional experts consisting of psychologists, psychotherapists, counselors, life coaches, career guides, and people with deep life experience to become an advisor Mosia.

Mosia provides an online counseling and emotional support platform designed to foster mental wellness and to help detect cases for people who need help. It anonymously connects users with the right advisor, who will guide users through completely confidential individual sessions – chat session, voice/video call.

Ooca, Thailand

Ooca offers its users a video session with therapists via both websites and smartphone app. From stress to relationships to depression, Ooca connects users with professionals to talk about the mental health challenges they’re facing and make an appointment.

According to an article published by JWT Intelligence, the startup was founded two years ago by a young Thai ex-military dentist Kanpassorn Suriyasangpetch who herself suffered from depression.

Ooca has raised US$320,000 in funding from Singapore-based Expara.

In March last year, Ooca announced that it has expanded its online psychiatric consulting services to corporate users to lessen their mental problems from work stress.

The company has offered its service to employees at corporations after introducing online psychiatry consultancy to individuals for eight months, The Bangkok Post has learned.

MindFi, Singapore

MindFi provides three-minute guided meditation exercises that fit into people’s daily routines, as featured in Tech In Asia. MindFi offers a focus timer after each routine to help users stay on task in a digitally mindless industry.

MindFi is founded by Bjorn Lee, who is an entrepreneur of tech startups in Singapore and Silicon Valley. Lee started MindFi after having his edutech startup Stickery secured funding from the likes of Google Ventures and 500 Startups and a stint with Zopim when it got acquired by Zendesk.

After a 10-day meditation retreat in northern India, the ex-product manager of Zopim and Zendesk experimented to integrate mindfulness into his daily life when he realised it was a social problem.

Being mindful, a scientifically-proven process of bringing one’s attention to experiences happening in the present moment is something that Lee said can be nurtured through meditation. MindFi came through with the idea that successful mindfulness ideally allows people to slow down, to have a better control of their impulses, take a step back, and attack a problem more efficiently.

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Quoting from Lee’s interview on e27, a major part of the MindFi pitch is not to help people get away from their lives, but actually to help them work better. For entrepreneurs, taking five or ten minutes to step out of a problem can make all the difference between solving it, or not.

Lee believed that being mindful increases the ability to focus and be more productive. Being able to focus and be productive can help contribute to a healthy state of mind.

MindFi then raised a six-digit seed round from Zopim founders Royston Tay and Kwok Yang Bin, as well as prominent Singapore-based angels Wong Poh Kam and Chow Yen Lu, all who meditate.

Arooga Health, Philippines

Arooga Health is a tech-based emotional and mental healthcare platform that helps employees find the appropriate care providers based on their objective of seeking help, their financial budget, available schedule, and preferred medium of virtual interaction.

Arooga believes in the importance of mental health to avoid unnecessary medical expenses. By addressing mental health concerns, Arooga is convinced that it could help boost employees’ overall work productivity, as well as help care providers get new customers.

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Arooga Health was founded by Dominique De Leon and Niña Samantha Sanchez.

Most of the startups we found offer online counseling service and meditation as a way to have a healthier mental state. Despite the limitation in variation, the fact that our region has seen them thrive and contribute real solutions to real problems is encouraging, not only for those who live with the problems, but also for those who might come up with new solutions addressing the many facets of mental health.
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Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

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