"I heard that a young man in the next department had a depression and left his job?" Seeing the explosive group message popping up in the WeChat group of enterprise employees, the heart of Lao L, a senior employee of an Internet media, "giggled" a little: "I didn't expect that there are so many people with psychological problems now." Counting relatives, classmates and friends, there have been one or two instances of mental health problems in the circle of friends of the old L in recent years.
Compared with others, old L is more worried about his own state, and he has often suffered from the harshness of customers and leaders recently, and his hair is getting grayer. Countless times old L can't help but want to have a seizure, in the face of the high tuition fees of the child's interest class and the bank's iron dunning text message, the old L can only maintain the "professionalism" of middle-aged people, and mechanically reply "OK, received" in the WeChat group. "Do I have depression too?" Recalling the recent increasingly frequent heart fatigue, inability to lift spirits, memory decline and even being awakened by the nightmare of incomplete performance, Old L has some palpitations about this.
Should I check it out? Where to check and will it be known to colleagues and family members? ...... Or else, forget it...
In addition to the fact that the name is based on the real event, the plight of the old L may have made many people see their own shadow. In fact, old L has begun to realize the signs of his psychological problems and has the idea of seeking professional services, which should be the starting point for change. However, the general stigma avoidance attitude of social concepts to psychological problems and the lack of high-quality psychological service resources make many people like Old L not know what they can do for themselves next.
This is what the suspension of the lab wants to change. Recently, Beijing Various Colors Technology Co., Ltd., a company owned by the digital mental health brand "Suspension Lab", completed a 50 million yuan A round of financing led by Lanchi Venture Capital and followed by the old shareholder Changling Capital, which is also one of the large investments in the field of mental health.
"Three-in-one" team background casting
"Scientific core + consumer shell" unique gene
Guo Tingting, the founder and CEO of the Suspension Lab, studied clinical and psychotherapy and cognitive neuroscience during her studies. During his phD at the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he mainly studied the mechanism of emotional regulation, that is, why a person has negative emotions, what things to do to alleviate negative emotions, and what activities occur in the human brain during this process. In designing her research program, she has been exploring practices that can improve the efficiency of emotional regulation.
In addition to research, she also engaged in mental health science on the Internet and deeply recognized the huge gap in mental health services in China. In the process of understanding the model of the health industry abroad, she gradually discovered that research and business are not mutually exclusive. On the one hand, emerging research-oriented commercial institutions in the field of health care can develop products to serve users; on the other hand, the real-world data generated by users when using products can also feed back the iteration of products and promote the development of research in this field.
Compared with simply engaging in research, commercializing research results and directly serving more people in need is obviously more worthwhile. This is why Guo Tingting created various technologies.
The first product of various technologies is called the various DNA tests, also nicknamed "personal instruction manuals": through a comprehensive interpretation of innate genes, growth environments and current conditions, to help people better understand themselves. The data insights provided by this product helped Guo Tingting's team better understand their users – 70% of them were confused about the future and 45% had obvious emotional stress troubles. This becomes the driving force behind their desire to explore themselves.
"Most people do not naturally have the ability to recover quickly from stress, and stress setbacks are inevitable conditions in everyone's life, which is the reason for the common high incidence of anxiety and depression." But the good news is that just as fitness can exercise the body's functions, emotional regulation and stress resistance can also be improved through mental exercise. So, we started to develop more down-to-earth solutions that would reduce emotional distress. Guo Tingting said. The "Pause Lab" brand also came into being.
The pause lab is positioned as a digital "mental gym": it provides users with an online intervention plan aimed at improving their emotional regulation ability, and users can effectively improve emotional distress by practicing regularly.
These interventions are based on evidence-based psychotherapy, traditionally in a one-to-one or one-to-many manner. However, in the face of the serious shortage of professional psychological service personnel in China and the high cost of services, Guo Tingting and her team want to reduce costs and increase efficiency through model innovation: "We are a relatively rare composite team with both psychological science class background and experience in scientific communication and C-end Internet products. This background shaped the unique genes of the suspension of the laboratory science core, the consumption shell. ”
Mental health is promising,
The effects of the suspension of laboratory interventions have been exceeded
Foreign head digital therapy products
The team has put a lot of effort into the development of the product line of the suspension laboratory. After the design of the intervention plan from the end of 2017 to the end of 2018, as well as the internal testing that ran through almost the whole year of 2019, the R&D team continued to iteratively optimize the intervention plan based on feedback and gradually improved the user-side interaction experience. It was not until May 2020 that the team decided that the suspension of laboratory products met expectations in terms of effectiveness, compliance, retention rate and recommendation rate, and then began to promote them.
Participants who come to the suspension lab register online will first complete an online preliminary screening assessment of their mental health status to confirm that their current status is appropriate for digital intervention products. For users who are currently in the onset of severe psychological disorders, the suspension laboratory will still give recommendations for further diagnosis and one-on-one interventions that need to be sought. "We are best suited for the general population and users with mild to moderate distress, and can play an effective role in preventing and preventing symptom escalation at an early stage." For more severe users, medication remains the treatment of choice. Of course, self-service products can also be used as auxiliary tools with the consent of the doctor. ”
Subsequently, participants are given a daily practice plan, which can be completed by following the guide using their mobile phone. Each program takes 25 days and takes about 20 minutes per day. Participants start with a basic practice plan. After completing the basic plan, the system will give suggestions based on the user's status that you need to repeat the training or participate in the advanced practice plan.
"I often don't know how to introduce the suspension lab because there are so few people doing it. It's a new species that can be thought of as an online mental gym, kind of like keep. The brain is plastic, as long as you are willing to spend time to take care of it, you can also improve your function through daily systematic exercises like the body, thereby improving various emotional problems and improving stress resistance. ”
Due to the meticulous polishing of the product, the suspension of the laboratory has been widely recognized as soon as it was launched - the number of paid users reached 10,000 at the end of 2020, and the number of paid users tripled to more than 30,000 at the end of 2021 just one year later. From the beginning, the suspension of the laboratory did not adopt a free or low-cost strategy - the first time to participate in the suspension of the laboratory is only about 500-600 yuan, and support unlimited retraining, equivalent to the price of a psychological consultation. For users with long-term emotional distress, this is a fairly cost-effective option. "Users deserve professional service, and at the same time are willing to pay a reasonable fee for professional services, all we have to do is to ensure that our professionalism is effective." Guo Tingting said.
Through a statistical analysis of participant data, the paused lab found that it was a clear winner on several key indicators compared to public reports of similar Products Hpify Digital Therapies in the United States.
In terms of adherence rate, only 9.76% of Happify users have completed exercises more than a certain percentage of times in a course. By comparison, 68% of the 35,000 participants who completed the 25-day intervention plan were suspended. Among them, the completion rate of first-time participants was 63%, and the average completion rate of sustained participants was 73%.
In terms of improving results, the suspension of laboratories also shows its advantages. Happify's effect on improving negative emotions such as depression, anxiety, and stress (a measure of the degree of change, the larger the effect, the greater the improvement) is about 0.5. Depending on the symptoms, the effect amount of suspension laboratory is distributed between 0.73 and 0.91. Overall, more than 80 percent of participants experienced significant improvements in distress in their first cycle.
Among them, about 45% of users had moderate or above emotional distress before participating (anxiety and depression scale scores above the clinical line). They achieved a large degree of improvement after completing their training, with an average 42% reduction in symptoms, which is basically close to the degree of one-on-one real intervention. Participants with mild distress had moderate improvement, with an average 25% reduction in symptoms. In addition, 10% to 20% of users were in a state of complete psychological health before participating, and the data showed that their emotional regulation ability and happiness were also significantly improved.
Based on good results, the overall renewal rate of the intervention program reached 42%, with an average of 74.7 days of intervention completion per multi-phase participant (as of February 2022). 81% of participants were willing to recommend training to others, while 53.5% of new users in the most recent year came from organic traffic or word-of-mouth recommendations.
The achievement of these achievements is not easy for a product that has only been online for more than a year and the product concept is ahead of its time.
Why is the effect so remarkable?
Model innovation or key
In fact, not only happy, but also the effect of suspending the lab is clearly better than the various digital emotional intervention products that currently have public effect data reports.
In the past four years of research and development, Guo Tingting and her production and research team have gradually summarized the four starting elements of digital psychological intervention product design, including four parts: intervention system, power system, tracking system and real person support system.
The intervention system is the daily training plan. In the suspension laboratory, there are different forms such as "exercises that follow audio guidance", "knowledge explanation of the principles of emotion regulation", "writing and combing records of emotions of the day", and psychological state assessment. These are based on evidence-based interventions for anxiety and depression, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance commitment therapy, mindfulness cognitive therapy, and positive psychology.
However, the suspension laboratory does not directly copy these schemes, but based on its own understanding of the core factors of psychological intervention effectiveness, originally construct a process-based model of psychological intervention process, and design daily practice modules accordingly. For example, in a basic 25-day intervention plan, they summarized the mechanism of action into three key words: "awareness, acceptance, and action."
In layman's terms, it is to first figure out what your feelings are in the moment, and then gradually learn to acknowledge and accept your own experience, and finally find the goal and direction of the next action. The pause lab believes that this process model is suitable for a wide range of emotional distress interventions across diagnostics. The data also strongly show that the program has a broad spectrum of significant effects on various emotional distresses such as anxiety, depression, and insomnia caused by stress.
The power system includes various elements that enhance user compliance, such as establishing intervention relationships, setting a schedule of actions, setting rules, and setting incentives.
"In fact, the effect of psychological intervention is good or bad depends largely on the establishment of the relationship between the two parties." We call it unconditional respect, sincerity and acceptance. Relationships will directly affect participant compliance. "In order to build a trusting relationship with users, the suspension lab has a lot of attention in many details. For example, users have privacy protection settings in any self-exposing link, which makes users feel safe.
In addition to the initial relationship building, the rules of the game are also an important factor affecting compliance. "We will tell users that this is a habit-making game, and the important thing is not how high the quality of daily practice is, but to stick to this habit for a long time." We'll help make this game as difficult as possible, set the necessary reminders, and provide direct incentives to complete tasks on a daily and every stage. In fact, many emotional distressed people also have procrastination problems, and our complete adherence rate is 70%, and participants often tell me that this is the only online exercise he has completed completely. There are actually a lot of scientific principles of behavioral intervention applied to this. Guo Tingting introduced.
Follow-up system, i.e. pre- and post-psychological assessment of each psychological intervention program. "A professional psychological scale in the form of self-reporting is also the most reliable form of mental health assessment available. It's also a necessary step to give users a better understanding of their mental state, like a gym's physical fitness system. Each user has their own mental health profile, which can easily see the effect of their long-term practice and the specific status of each point in time. ”
The suspension lab's unique "semi-self-help mode with live guidance" is also one of the reasons for its remarkable effect. Guo Tingting believes that the empathy, attention, listening, and relationship of safety and trust with the counselor in one-on-one traditional psychological counseling are important technologies of psychological counseling and one of the underlying factors for the effectiveness of intervention. Therefore, the product design of the suspended laboratory also moved the "human element" online as much as possible.
The "pyramid" system and the construction logic of the composite professional team - psychological intervention "people" is the most important
Based on the current shortage of psychological intervention talents in China, the suspension laboratory has also designed a service system similar to the "pyramid" to maximize the benefits of limited talent resources. The top professionals are the lead researchers, the designers of the practice program. Like Guo Tingting, they have a master's degree in clinical psychology. They respond to participants' questions through a weekly live broadcast, and in the process precipitate standardized response guidelines for user FAQs.
Under the main creator is the community operation personnel, composed of the operation leader and several senior users who have passed the assessment of multiple training periods. They receive lead training and provide immediate support to users with reference to the creator's standardized guidelines, respond to various exercise confusions in a timely manner, and demonstrate a non-judgmental, supportive attitude. Currently, each operator can provide Q&A support to 1,000-3,000 participants at the same time.
In addition, there is a one-on-one customer service assistant, which mainly provides immediate support for users' non-professional operation problems.
This pyramid system allows users to respond quickly to all their questions, creating a secure and supportive environment for intervention.
"In fact, intervention is complex, and the most difficult thing in it is the relationship and motivation. Insisting on action and ensuring sufficient practice time are the most core elements of intervention. Our design for urging start-ups, building trust relationships, and timely support has been proven to greatly improve adherence. This is also the most unique part of the pause lab. Guo Tingting said.
Behind the unique pattern design is a composite team of professionals. At present, Clinical and Internet are its two largest teams, with 1/3 of the number of employees each. This makes the proportion of its R&D personnel account for about 70%, and the background of R&D drive is very obvious.
The founding teams of various technologies are from the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Department of Psychology of Beijing Normal University, and have received systematic academic training and clinical intervention training before starting a business. At present, a clinical master's and doctoral research team of more than ten people has been developed, responsible for the research and development of intervention programs and the data research of intervention mechanisms. They are all research + intervention compound talents from well-known clinical psychology departments at home and abroad.
Interestingly, the Internet product team is mostly transformed by deep users who have personally benefited from it, and is committed to designing a set of gamification mechanisms that help form healthy habits, so that participants can more easily activate these things that are beneficial to their mental and physical health, and eventually integrate into their daily habits. "Our users choose to join us because they identify with the company culture and the value of their products. I'm very grateful to them, because many of them are high-level talents that are difficult for the average startup to recruit. Guo Tingting introduced.
Write at the end
After completing the 50 million yuan Series A financing, various technologies said that they will continue to build a complete digital mental health solution matrix through continuous basic research and product research and development, and continue to promote the popularization of evidence-based psychological interventions. Among them, the digitization of psychological interventions is an important part.
At present, the production and research department of the suspended laboratory has also cooperated with the top psychology research teams in China, such as Peking University, Beijing Normal University and the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to jointly explore the digital mental health service model and promote the application and transformation of basic research in clinical psychology.
Nevertheless, Guo Tingting still believes that the suspension of the laboratory will strive to explore and digitize the parts of the traditional one-on-one psychological intervention that can be abstractly summarized and standardized to form digital therapy; but if there are some important links, the interpretability and standardization are not high enough, nor can they be digitized for the sake of digitization, and manual intervention is still required. "After all, I've always believed that effect is paramount."