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☁️🍄 Issue No. 021: An Apple a Day

the tech titan’s big push into mental health

June 18, 2023

Happy Father’s Day, and welcome back to Headlines, y’all. Today, we’re covering 🍎’s big bite into mental wellness. Let’s get right to it.

AN APPLE A DAY

For years, Apple has been quietly making moves on healthcare. This June, it’s revving its engines with an emphasis on mental and emotional wellness.

Is the company playing mind games or getting serious about mental health? Its latest moves suggest there's much more to come.

WHAT’S HAPPENING

During its annual WWDC, Apple unveiled a suite of four new mental health tools. 

Watch yourself. First up is Apple’s newly launched Mindfulness app (available on Apple Watch or the Health app) — where users can log their emotions (sad, happy, anxious), their valence (from Very Unpleasant to Very Pleasant) and associations (what’s going on). 

Eureka. Helping users make key connections, Apple will use data from the mood tracker to create a trend report, mapping emotional states to various life factors over time, from work to family to friendships. For instance, the report may inform you that 80% of the past month’s pleasant moments were linked to exercise.

Dear diary. Think journaling on steroids. The new Journal app will track location, photos, phone calls, and automatically prompt you to stop, reflect, and write — easing the process of recording moments. Using machine learning, it’ll even help journalers make connections to subjects or people that show up regularly. 

Test me. Rounding out the suite are standardized assessments for anxiety and depression. As we covered in Issue No. 015: A Sixth Sense, mental health detection is a crucial gap in clinical psychology. With Apple’s new feature, users will be able to take tests right from their iPhone, get a report on what’s going on, and even get connected to a doctor/therapist.

Finally, there’s the much-memed Vision Pro. While not an official part of the current mental health repertoire, the mixed reality headset can expand Apps fully into your space, like during a Mindfulness session, where you can create a private moment of calm.

And in the coming years, the headset will undoubtedly play a crucial part — especially with reports of its ability to detect cognitive states via eye tracking, skin conductance, and more.

THE LONG GAME

A mood tracker, a journaling app, some psych assessments, and a VR headset. At face value, it may not seem like much, but take a few steps back and a clearer picture crystallizes.

A multi-year play, Apple’s grandest and loftiest goal, beyond consumer tech, is reimagining consumer healthcare.

More recently, amid the AI frenzy, Apple is rumored to be working on its own AI-powered health coach (codenamed Quartz). Many more projects are in the works, like its study with UCLA and Biogen leveraging iPhone/Watch to detect anxiety and depression via keyboard strokes, facial expressions, and more. 

Now, with its latest foray into mental well-being, Apple is closing the circle, honing in on a crisis that costs the global economy a staggering $1T every year. 

“Mental health is as important as physical health and affects people every day in how they think, feel, and act,” read its most recent press release.

LOOKING AHEAD

A giant like Apple diving headfirst into mental wellness? It underlines just how mainstream the industry has become. 

And with 1.3B active iPhones and 100M+ Apple Watches worldwide, it’s essentially about to conduct the biggest mental health clinical trial in history — biometrics, life variables, and health data all tied to a fluctuating tapestry of emotional states. 

No sh*t, Sherlock. One thing to note, Apple has long been criticized for watching which apps and features gain traction in the App Store and then swiping their innovations for themselves — notoriously known as Sherlocking. 

And with AI bots like Pi attracting an expanding audience, it’s not too hard to envision Apple Sherlocking emotional LLMs — combining its expansive mental health ecosystem with its own iteration of Pi. Imagine a hyper-personalized coach and confidant, trained on billions of Apple’s mental health data points. The impact would be nothing short of enormous.

There are caveats, of course. Some folks may read the above and see the future of psychological healing; others may hear nothing but dystopian alarm bells. Moving forward, privacy will be a core and crucial concern. Though, to its credit, Apple does distinguish itself in various ways in this arena. 

Punchline: Do we really want one of the most powerful companies in the world to hold the keys to our emotional well-being? If the past is any indication, we may not have a choice — with Apple’s track record for making the uncool, cool (think iPods, smartwatches, and PCs), the world of mental wellness seems slated for a shapeshift. 

QUICK HITS

  • Meta. Mental health awareness can be bad for mental health. 

  • Roll call. Huberman Lab covers the science of MDMA. 

  • 2x. The number of people aged 19–30 who report taking psychedelics has doubled in just three years. 

  • Shroom gratis. An Oregon-based nonprofit wants to provide free/low-cost psilocybin therapy to low-income clients.

  • Self-conscious. New study finds ChatGPT outperforms humans in emotional awareness evaluations. 

  • New roll. FDA approves clinical trial at UCLA investigating LaNeo MDMA as a treatment for schizophrenia. 

  • Casual collisions. New research investigates the rise of workplace loneliness and the importance of “casual collisions.” 

NEWS & TRENDS

1) Just do it

The future of health and wellness is looking more and more holistic. This week, Nike officially launched Well Collective, signifying the company’s commitment to the “whole self.” The foundation will be grounded in five pillars: movement, mindfulness, nutrition, rest, and connection. 

Under mindfulness, the company is pledging to promote research-backed methods from meditation to visualization, breathwork to self-talk. And the global sports brand will bring in over 1K new trainers and a roster of experts: academics, researchers, scientists, medical professionals, and more.→ Read more

2) Psychedelic retreat seeks buyer

Atman, one of the world’s first legal psilocybin retreats, is seeking a buyer. Fully operational, the retreat has been providing psychedelic experiences in Jamaica for over four years — and its retreat process has been refined over dozens of iterations, boasting referrals from CNBC, Michael Pollan, and more.

As founder Aaron Nesmith-Beck moves on to his next project, Atman is in search of a service-oriented and high-integrity buyer, with a strong preference for those with experience in psychedelic work. Interested in seeing the full deck? → Complete this short form

DEALS & DEBUTS

🧠 Octave, a behavioral health platform, raised $52M in a Series C round co-led by Cigna Ventures, Novo Holdings, and Avidity Partners. The funding will accelerate Octave’s expansion to more regions later this year. → source

🧊 Nue Life Health, a ketamine therapy provider, secured $1.9M in new funding  from existing investors. The company also announced that its wearables-connected app is now available free for all patients.→ source

🪷 Anise Health, a culturally responsive digital mental health startup, raised $1.2M in a pre-seed round led by Kicker Ventures. The platform aims to establish the gold standard of care for people of color, starting with a focus on Asian Americans.→ source

💊 PharmAIa Biotech, a company manufacturing MDXX (including MDMA) molecules, announced a non-brokered private placement offering of up to $3.76M.→ source 

🍄 Psyched Wellness, distributor of Amanita Muscaria-based wellness products, announced that it has closed the initial tranche of its non-brokered private placement, raising $500K. → source

🫂 Equip, a virtual eating disorder treatment startup, joined forces with Accolade, an integrated healthcare delivery company. The partnership will connect patients to a five-person care team, including a physician, dietitian, therapist, peer mentor, and family mentor. → source

🌞 LISSUN, a mental health startup based in India, announced the launch of Sunshine, a center for children facing developmental and behavioral disorders. → source 

💼 Lyra Health, a workforce mental health platform, teamed up with insurance provider MetLife to provide employees filing disability claims access to mental health services as part of their recovery. → source

⏰ Awakn Life Sciences, a psychedelic biotech company, is exiting ketamine healthcare services to focus solely on research and development of addiction therapies. The company is in talks with providers to license out its healthcare IP. → source

WHAT I’M READING

  • Listen; the trees speak. Psychological healing and inner work is inextricable from our connection with our environment and outside world. From the redwoods of Silicon Valley to the cedars of the Pacific Northwest, Richard Powers pens a sprawling, multigenerational epic. Some of the most gorgeous writing I have read in recent memory. → The Overstory

That’s all for this week! Hope you’re having a fantastic weekend. When this email lands in your inbox, I’ll be at vibecamp with ~800 other Twitter folks in Maryland — most likely dancing. 💃

Until next Sunday,

-Mel

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