The JASIRI Talent Investor program, supported by Allan and Gill Gray Philanthropy, has brought on mental health offering Vimbo Health to support August’s new cohort of young entrepreneurs.
The firm was established in November 2019 by CEO Tafi Mazikana and CSO Sherrie Steyn. Vimbo Health aims at assisting entrepreneurs through their easy-to-use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)-based platform.
72% of entrepreneurs struggle with mental health issues
Mental health support by Africans, for Africans
Small Business Economics published a study named “The prevalence and co-occurrence of psychiatric conditions among entrepreneurs and their families”, it shows a worrying statistic that while 48% of non-entrepreneurs struggle with mental health while for an entrepreneur it is 72%.
Mazikaan stated that “In SA, the treatment gap for entrepreneurs is 92% due to challenges like stigma and affordability. Telepathy itself carries a huge cost putting it out of reach of many.”
The app allows the cohorts of JASIRI to learn the basics of mental wellness, develop coping strategies to tackle challenging behaviors and anxieties and learn journaling and meditation. The app is designed to assist users at every stage of their mental health journey even if the participant does not think they need quick help
Mazikana explained that “Our self-guided digital therapies act to reduce symptoms commonly linked with anxiety and depression. They provide an alternative that is less stigmatizing to people to make their first step with mental health treatment, when and where it is convenient for them and at an affordable cost.”
The app provides anonymous feedback to the JASIRI team, to allow mentors to gauge the overall mental health of the cohort as the year-long program progresses.
Accelerators benefit from the moral good of assisting the entrepreneurs in their programmers, but for anonymous data, insights to allow them to take a regular temperature check to understand the wellbeing of the cohort and corrective actions that can be taken. Employers also benefit and overall, there is a lot of evidence that enhanced mental health leads to improved outcomes and productivity.
Only 3.4% of mental health apps are supported by research and we have undertaken what we understand to be the first South African research study of its kind, in association with the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG). This roves our local use case and the effectiveness of our platform.
