Running a tech start-up that was ahead of its time which prevented a suicide
I was inspired to work in Mental Health in the workplace by my father, a well-known and well-respected Consultant Psychiatrist. In 2003, long before the days of Facebook and social media (CD ROMs were high tech), I launched an eMental (cCBT) health company to take my father’s knowledge to people in their workplaces. My idea was that by making his advice accessible to employees through their organisational intranet, I could help prevent mental illnesses from occurring (or offer help when they were early stage), confidentially support a whole organisation at once, and link to other sources of support available to employees. I fed back user numbers so that the organisation would know how many people were using it or might need help. Great idea. I was just over fifteen years ahead of my time!
“Xanthis’ best testimonial (and something that make me so proud) is that we helped to prevent a suicide.”
Xanthis gained traction in the public sector who were more forward thinking in their approach to mental health. It was a total taboo in the private sector in those days. My first clients were Universities and Police forces; large public sector organisations. In order to successfully implement my online tool I had to work extensively with Occupational Health, Health & Safety, Unions, Communications teams and a wide variety of stakeholders - some who needed winning around to be supportive. I built up a huge amount of experience and knowledge about organisational Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing, how to build and implement a strategy and how to implement a tech solution as part of it.
One core lesson learnt was that it is one thing implementing a provider (or eHealth tool) into an organisation, it is a totally different thing to get employees to know about and actually use it. Successful launch of a strategy, provider or service requires making it part of the organisational infrastructure and changing policies, systems and processes around it.
Xanthis successfully traded for over 10 years. We developed a clinical evidence base for our product which included a survey in a police call centre which showed that people who used our eMental health tool clinically improved their mental health scores. I remain very interested in and committed to technology; how to develop it and use it in health, mental health and wellbeing.
