Victoria’s Cognito Health has closed a $1.1 million pre-seed round led by Garage Capital.
Investors also included in the funding round were Rasool Rayani, Andrew Wilkinson (Tiny), Jason Warner (Former CTO Git-Hub & Heroku), Scott Lake (co-founder Shopify), Tobyn Sowden (CEO and founder, Redbrick), and Rob Fraser (CEO and founder, endūr).
Co-founded by Jason Cridge and Armon Arani, Cognito Health is on a mission to change the way mental healthcare is provided to all Canadians.
Prior to the pandemic 3.8 million Canadians experienced depression and anxiety in a given year. During the pandemic this number doubled to over 7 million. 500,000 Canadians miss work each week due to mental health reasons.
The economic impact of mental health conditions on the economy is $51 billion per year and it doesn’t account for anguish experienced by families and sufferers.
Cognito CEO Cridge believes that the combination of physician, medication, and counselling is the most effective treatment for depression and anxiety. However, medication is expensive and misunderstood, few people have a family doctor, and counselors are scarce and expensive.
Enter Cognito Health.
Cognito’s unique model involves a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and medication which have been shown to be the most effective treatment for depression and anxiety.
Their platform also offers digital assessments, nursing visits, physician visits, counselling, coaching, self directed courses, medication delivery, and daily affirmations all under one pricing plan. All of these services are geared towards comprehensive wrap-around care for client’s mental health needs.
Leave a Reply