Meet Your New Therapist…

Your smartwatch! It’s true, in the very near future, wearable-tech apps may be the key to improving the lives of the hundreds of millions of people who live with mental illness.

- Chloe Berge

IT’S NO SECRET THAT TECHNOLOGY CAN help your health: Your smartphone, fitness tracker and smartwatch can monitor your heart rate, count your steps, tell you to meditate and track the quality of that blissful, post-meditation sleep. But can they help your mental health? Hopefully, yes. Some scientists and software developers are moving away from calculating how many calories you’re burning and putting their efforts toward a new cause: creating wearable-tech apps that improve care for more than 450 million people worldwide who suffer from mental illness.

And this innovative tech couldn’t have come at a better time: One in two Canadians will experience mental illness by the time they reach the age of 40, and it’s the leading cause of disability in Canada. Suicide continues to be a leading cause of death among youth, and 4,000 people commit suicide in Canada each year (an average of almost 11 suicides a day). What’s also alarming about the numbers is the stigma that still remains when it comes to talking about mental health and seeking help: A whopping 40 percent of people reported that they have experienced depression or anxiety at some point but didn’t seek help.

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