Our Founding Story:

The interesting thing about defining moments in our lives is that we often don’t realize their impact until after the moment has passed - in hindsight. 

For me, that moment came on May 27th, 2017, when my father had lost his final battle with substance abuse. 

At that moment, I wanted to be strong for my family, say everything was going to be okay, practice empathy, and effectively regulate my emotions in order to be present. But that didn’t happen. I was broken and didn’t know what to do or how to act. I didn’t even know where to begin.

So, I did the only thing I know to do as Black man -  push through it. The truth is, I was afraid. Afraid that if I went into therapy, I would be perceived just as my father was.  

If it wasn’t for a friend who challenged me to simply take the first step - to grieve, process, and begin naming my emotions - I would have missed one of the most defining moments in my life.

The experience I had, unfortunately, wasn’t exclusive to me. The statistics around our mental health as human beings hasn’t been trending in a positive direction. In fact, mental health and substance use disorders affect 13% of the world's population (~1 billion people), which has been even more impactful on gen Z, with 91% experiencing at least one physical or emotional symptom because of stress.

Why start a mental health company? We’re still scratching the surface of meeting mental health needs.

We’ve spent the past 6 months listening to stories of hundreds of youth and young adults who have struggled to find their starting point for mental health. Of all the shortages created by the pandemic, the shortage of licensed therapists has created massive ripple effects here in America and globally. Our mission is to leverage the power of web3 to create a zero-barrier to entry for quality mental healthcare.  

Many have tried to solve this problem - we set out to solve it differently and address the root - mental health literacy and behavior change. We nudge people to begin a mental health journey and reduce the friction to access therapy.

We leverage a reward based economy to gamify the behavior of daily mental fitness through our challenges and gamified education and award tokens with utility that can be redeemed for access to therapy.  

Interested in learning more? Read our whitepaper and join our Discord to gain access to our beta.

We believe the most compelling use cases of blockchain technology are still being created and excited to drive that change through Compass.

- Jarrod Barnes, Co-Founder & CEO, Compass