Transforming mental health care through an anonymous, scalable group therapy platform

Shrenik Jain is the founder of Beacon (formerly Grüp). Labeled “Most Disruptive Startup”, by the American Psychiatric Association, Beacon is a mobile therapy software-as-a-service platform that grows through natural language processing. Beacon seeks to fill the current gaps in mental health care by providing users with anonymous, persistent communities of like-minded individuals. The application gives users the opportunity to connect with others experiencing issues such as PTSD and depression without fear of stigma. Aside from his role at Beacon, Shrenik is also a trained first responder (EMT) who volunteers with the Montgomery County Volunteer Fire/Rescue Association.

Q. How does the Beacon platform work?

SHRENIK JAIN: It’s pretty simple. It’s very intuitive for the user. The user will basically just sign in with the user name and a password. They’ll have a screen name—some name they choose to adopt consistently, like you would have on any other anonymous online network like Reddit or Yik Yak, and then they’ll be able to see a list of different groups.

Clicking on the group will reveal more information about the group. It might be a group on eating disorders or PTSD, for example. It’ll show information about the therapist that moderates that group. Then, if they think, “Okay, I’m suffering from an eating disorder—this group looks like it’s a good fit for me,” they’ll click, join the group, and then they’ll be placed with a one-on-one conversation with the therapist or the moderator who leads the group.

And now this therapist will basically screen them to see if the group is appropriate for them. We have things like in-built diagnostic forms, so the therapist can easily triage the patient and determine if they’re appropriate for this group. Once the user is in the group, and the therapist thinks they’re a good fit, they have access to this 24/7 group chat where they can talk with five to seven other peers, and they’ll be persistent—the same other peers with pseudonyms—and they can do that at any time of the day—3am, whenever they feel like they need support, they can reach out then. A therapist moderates the group to intervene when necessary and keep the conversation really constructive. The therapist also has the ability to schedule conference calls, so everyone can come together for a more structured approach to traditional CBT [cognitive behavioral therapy] or any other form of therapy.

Q. What are you doing to grow the platform?

A. We’re talking about how we’re going to deploy this platform. We actually thought for a long time about this and we realized the best way to approach it would actually be to assume a B2B SaaS model, where we go to other large institutions that already have providers and then improve the reach and efficiency of these existing providers.

This was really based on the example I gave in the beginning, about the VA, where there’s this huge capacity of providers that’s just not being effectively utilized right now. These efficiency gains are magnified at scale. When we go to these large institutions, we can have them directly license out our technology. Then, in return, they increase the capacity of their therapist while increasing care for their users.

The beauty of this is there’s zero cost to the end user. If two out of three people are not seeking care for a mental health condition, it’s not really realistic to expect any scaleable solution to directly bill patients. So, by doing this, we circumvent the whole issue of care being unaffordable to patients and just improve the reach and efficiency of existing services.

Q. How has the institutional community reacted to Beacon?

A. In general, in the institutional community there’s tremendous excitement for what we’re doing, just because this kind of an approach hasn’t really been tried before. In terms of the institutions we’re targeting, first we’re working with universities and police and fire departments. Now, the reason for this is the need for mental health services in these verticals, you could say, is just so pressing and these departments are highly autonomous that they’ll adopt basically our MVP to provide peer support to their population—not even clinical therapy, because right now more firefighters and police officers actually die from suicide than from physical wounds that they get on their job. There’s a very big sense of urgency in this community.

We’re going to launch with these verticals and give them a platform for peer support. Then, in our operation with these verticals, we’re going to generate the cash flows and validation that we need to work with larger institutions like big healthcare systems and the Federal Government and VA. But, so far, we’ve been working very closely with different experts within healthcare systems in the VA. Johns Hopkins in particular has been a tremendous source of support for us, both because our team originated as students at Hopkins, but also because we have access to one of the best healthcare systems in the country. We have psychiatry advisors like Dr. Geetha Jayaram, one of the most renowned psychiatrists in the world, advising us and making sure we’re building something that’s clinically relevant.

Connect with Shrenik on LinkedIn

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