This is certainly shocking, but 75–85% of suicides are men 🙁 The reason is that 77% of men have severe mental health issues. But 40% of them don’t share these problems with anyone because “a man should deal with his problems himself.” This means there’s an opportunity to break into the mental health market with a specialized app for men! Here’s how it could look.
Project Essence
Mettle claims that they have created the only app for improving mental health exclusively for men. However, what they offer men is not just ‘mental health’ but ‘mental fitness’ 😉
Unlike physical fitness, mental fitness, according to the app creators, requires just “a few minutes a day” of engagement. More precisely, it talks about 5–15 minutes a day.
The exercises are of four types – meditations, breathing exercises, sound effects (music, nature sounds), and ‘mindhacking’ (mindhack), which helps to reboot the brain and change one’s attitude towards what’s happening. These exercises help to solve the following tasks.
Sleep better, wake up refreshed and energized for accomplishments.
Learn to relax and reduce stress to energetically cope with life’s obstacles, viewing things from a positive side.
Gain a sense of happiness from life, helping to combat the constant feeling of anxiety, engage in sex often and with pleasure, which in turn helps to build and maintain personal relationships.
Manage life events, be confident, and gather strength at crucial moments – whether it’s an important business meeting or a longer task that needs to be completed.
Maintain motivation, focus on set goals, and cultivate the right habits – to achieve greater results in life.
Besides exercises and motivational videos, the app also has an AI assistant that asks users every day how they are doing, how they feel – and gives them advice on what to do to improve their condition.
The app was only published a few days ago, so it’s too early to talk about statistics. At the same time, Mettle raised its first investment of 2.5 million pounds sterling (approximately $3.15 million) for the promotion of the app.
What’s Interesting
Some time ago, there was a sudden and sharp rise in interest in the topic of mental health. Between 2015 and 2020, more than 2.5 thousand apps for mental health improvement were launched.
In 2021, there were 10 startups in this field, each valued at over $1 billion.
For new players still wanting to enter this market, it has become very difficult to compete head-on with such large companies. So, they started segmenting – focusing on a specific audience.
In this sense, one of the most striking examples is the Hallow app. Essentially, it’s a clone of Calm or Headspace – but for Catholics! Therefore, meditations here are replaced with prayers, and bedtime stories with biblical stories. Considering there are 1.3 billion Catholics in the world, the app found its audience, and the startup raised $105 million in investments.
Other niche mental health services include:
Mantra Health – mental health for students. Raised $34.2 million in investments.
Little Otter – mental health for children from 0 to 14 years old. Raised $26.2 million. Arcascope – mental health for shift workers. They analyze biorhythms to adjust work schedules accordingly. Raised $4.7 million.
SoundMind – mental health for youth. They use music because youth already use music for relaxation, stress relief, and mood correction. Raised $3.1 million. Mettle fits well into the same trend, as they have created another niche mental health app – this time for men.
But why men? They are supposed to be strong and confident even without any apps, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case 🙁
77% of men have pronounced symptoms of mental health disorders – anxiety, stress states, and even depression. The most common causes of these problems are work (including business), money, and physical health.
Yet, 40% of men never discuss their mental issues with anyone. Why?
The most common answer is, “I was taught that a man should deal with his problems himself.” Other common responses include, “I don’t want to be a burden to anyone,” “It embarrasses me,” “There’s something wrong with it,” “I don’t want to admit to anyone that I need support,” “I don’t want to seem weak,” “I don’t even have anyone to talk to about it.”
Thus, the carefully cultivated image of a “strong man” becomes his weakness. He is forced to keep all problems inside – and this causes even bigger problems. Which he keeps to himself again – leading to even bigger problems. And so it continues to worsen cyclically until it leads to a serious crisis.
So serious – that the number of suicides among men in the US is almost four times higher than among women. Moreover, the most frequent suicides are not among the youth, the elderly, or minorities – but middle-aged white men.
A similar picture is observed in every country – men make up about 75–85% of suicides 🙁
In general, Mettle has chosen its audience very wisely. It’s half of all people, most of whom suffer from mental problems, but almost half of whom do not share them with other people. But with the app – they can share 😉
Where to run
Unfortunately, mental health problems will continue to worsen. This is facilitated, among other things, by the growing popularity of online and remote work, when more and more people are increasingly left alone – which does not contribute to the improvement of mental state.
No wonder one of the US Surgeon General’s reports in 2023, to which I have referred several times, was titled “The Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” – meaning the situation has already taken on the character of an epidemic.
Moreover, this is compounded by the general deterioration of the financial situation in the world, affecting the state of work and business. Considering that historically more men are engaged in business, and they are usually responsible for the welfare of their families, even if they work for hire – men are having an increasingly hard time. If we take into account that, again for historical reasons, they are not ready to share their problems with anyone – this is even worse.
So the moment for the appearance of a special mental health app for men might be very timely indeed.
Accordingly, the general direction of movement is the creation of services for psychological assistance to men that would help them combat the most common male problems: work, business, and money.
One option is to go down the well-trodden path by analogy with “regular” mental health improvement apps, but adapted for men.
As an example for inspiration and copying, you can choose today’s Mettle. While continuing to develop and strengthen the technology and functionality of the AI assistant, which is still in its early stages in their app.
In short – “Take Care of Men” 😉