May is Mental Health Awareness Month. There are many entrepreneurs who are providing innovative services to address different populations' mental health needs. Case in point is Tatiana Pimenta,
CEO & Founder of Vittude and a 2019 Cartier Women's Initiative Fellow. Vittude's work is democratizing access to mental health in Brazil. Here is the company's story was profiled in the latest GEM Global Report:
Democratizing access to mental healthservices
Tatiana Pimenta, CEO & Founder, Vittude (Brazil), Cartier Women’s Initiative Fellow, 2019
Nearly a billion people around the world live with a diagnosable mental disorder. Many do not have access to effective care for various reasons.
According to the World Health Organization, Brazil leads the world in anxiety cases and ranks fifth for cases of depression. Public health support for treatment remains low, so many Brazilians living with mental health conditions are not getting the care they need and deserve.
Tatiana Pimenta experienced this first-hand. A successful business executive, Tatiana faced a host of personal challenges in 2012. Anxious to avoid a negative impact on her career, she sought therapy, but this brought its own set of problems.
After frustrating and unhelpful sessions with inexperienced psychologists, she finally found a reputable practitioner. Said Tatiana: “His office was 11 km away and traffic in São Paulo is atrocious. It took nearly three hours to get there and back every time. I got to thinking, ‘Couldn’t it be easier to connect patients with therapists?’”
In 2016, she launched a company, Vittude, with an ambitious mission: to democratize access to mental health services by removing the financial barrier to mental health care. As a B2B2C-driven marketplace, the company connects high-quality psychologists to individuals and corporations.
The platform combines behavioural science, AI technology and human interaction to optimize personal growth and professional development in support of a person’s whole health, at work and in life. With Vittude Match, the company is positioned to provide a highly personalized employee experience driving not only well-being but also growth and peak performance.
Vittude Match helps eliminate trial and error by using machine-learning models to match each employee to the most effective care. Since its founding, Vittude has built the largest network of qualified psychologists in Brazil. In the past two years, Vittude’s annual revenue has grown fivefold its and its total customer base twentyfold. To date, it has served over 100,000 members, and the number of psychotherapy sessions has more than tripled year-on-year, as the willingness to invest in employee well-being and development has been growing significantly.
Today, Vittude serves over 70 enterprises, including SAP, L’Oréal, Saint-Gobain, Grupo Boticário and Banco do Brasil.
Tatiana said: "I’m very happy and grateful for all we have built in the past years. There is a lot of work to do concerning mental health awareness. I strongly believe we have the opportunity to positively impact millions of people.”