Mindset Health (YC S19) raises $1.1M to develop hypnosis apps
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Hypnosis get’s a bad rap but it’s essentially just a state of focused attention and absorption where you become more suggestible. It’s an experiential learning state that amplifies therapeutic techniques, from CBT to visualization and direct suggestion.
If you’re interested in learning more, here’s a recent study from Stanford on the brain areas activated during hypnosis: (https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2016/07/study-identif...) and a meta-analysis on hypnosis as an adjunct to CBT vs CBT alone (http://coyoteinstitute.us/Hypnosis%20as%20an%20Adjunct%20to%...).
We work with expert doctors and psychologists to deliver audio hypnotherapy sessions (think goal-orientated guided meditation) through mobile apps for various health conditions, like anxiety and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
I work on Mindset Health with my brother, Chris, and small (but awesome) team based out of Melbourne, Australia. We raised our US$1.1m seed round coming out of Y Combinator and are passionate about empowering people to manage their conditions themselves, from home.
We have two programs at the moment, Mindset for Mental Health and Nerva for IBS.
Mindset is based on the work by Dr Michael Yapko, a world-leading expert in the clinical uses of hypnosis and involves teaching coping skills while in a hypnotic state.
Nerva is based on the work by Dr Simone Peters, who ran a randomized clinical study with Monash University that found her 6-week gut-directed hypnotherapy approach helped 71% of participants improve their symptoms by an average of 62%.
We want your feedback, questions, and ideas. We know the topics of ‘hypnosis’ and ‘hypnotherapy’ bring up questions and skepticism and we’d love to dive deeper into those questions.
You have to instead see how much you hate your job. And that you will either spend your entire life hating it, or you will change it.
Really interesting (and comforting) to hear someone else doing the same thing.
When I say 'state', I don't necessarily mean a distinct cognitive state, instead, I'm describing the characteristics: heightened suggestibility induced by expectation and focused attention.
This has interesting information on how little of a state there really is. > If trance simply refers to whatever happens after hypnosis, then it could signify most anything, as each individual’s personal experience is unique, and responses to hypnosis are cued mostly by suggestions and very little, if at all, as we have noted, by the presence of the hypnotic induction (Lynn, Laurence, & Kirsch, 2015). If the term trance implies that the purported state somehow increases suggestibility, then this definition is circular, as hypnotic responsiveness can at once indicate the presence of a hypnotic trance and be explained by it (see Braffman & Kirsch, 1999; Lynn & Green, 2011; Sarbin & Coe, 1972).
One of the more interesting developments I've seen, such as in this systematic review of hypnosis literature, is that different phenomena have different suggestibility, and that hypnotic scales are really unreliable, as people do not fit on a straight line from non-suggestible to suggestible.
I'm also fascinated that the Carleton Skills Training Program (CSTP) can improve suggestibility, so testing for it may not be the right approach, but you might rather find people who are self-taught.
One thing that I found really interesting is that there's some evidence for a region in our brain responsible as to whether we percieve a thought as automatic (e.g. not starting in our consiousness), called the parietal operculum. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207144.2019.16...
This essentially leads to one possibility that hypnosis is little more than a kind of imagination that engages this region versus any other.
I found their conclusion interesting: "We have argued that hypnosis does not produce a trance or ASC clearly distinguishable from nonhypnotic experiential states, but that hypnotic interventions, nevertheless, can initiate a broad array of alterations in consciousness". So essentially they're arguing that although it's not a distinct altered state of consciousness, it can trigger changes to consciousness?
I haven't heard of the CSTP - will definitely check it out, thanks! Could imagine a world where you use techniques such as these at the beginning of a program to enhance the effectiveness of the program.
I wouldn't necessarily take that away from the study - acting on the same brain area doesn't necessarily mean it's 'kind of imagination', instead that it could just work on similar brain areas as automaticity (or perceived automaticity).
Can I hire a hypnotist or something to try this on me, or is there a book which describes the process?
I imagine it's something like getting into a flow state on command & staying there.
We have an alert session in Mindset you can try as well. The flow comparison is quite apt.
Is really any VC giving out so much money out _before_ seeing any kind of result/code?
We work with respected doctors and researchers and are evidence-focused (Nerva is based on an RCT and we're in the early stages of our own study).
I do think our website is pretty respectable: https://www.mindsethealth.com
So maybe don't buy all the hype, but from your comments I get the vibe that you automatically dismiss the whole thing because of the h word. That's not necessarily right either.