Envision Therapeutics

CBT is a process that begins with basic psychological education and the creation of a personalized “fear map” to understand how specific triggers, thoughts, and behaviors drive a person’s anxiety. Then patients iteratively learn, practice, and reflect on more adaptive thoughts and behaviors, empowering them to live life without the limitations imposed by anxiety. Currently, patients have to go through months of expensive, face-to-face therapy with a clinician to experience the benefits of CBT.

We’ve operationalized the essential, evidence-based components of CBT that make it so effective. The resulting app will allow users to learn, personalize, and practice the process of CBT on their own. It will also provide at-home support for those already receiving therapy from a clinician.

• Clinical therapy can be very effective, but it requires months of weekly, in-person sessions and costs thousands of dollars. Most therapists have months-long waitlists, and 570 counties in the US don’t even have a single mental healthcare provider. Among those who could access a therapist, many never try due to the stigma associated with seeing one.
• Our app will be a fraction of the price of traditional therapy, accessible anytime from the privacy of a smartphone or computer, and free of pathologizing clinical jargon. And for those who do receive traditional therapy, our app will provide support for patients while they’re waiting for their first clinical session, as they practice the CBT process in between sessions, and long after they’ve stopped seeing a clinician.

• Most of the self-help solutions currently available aren't evidence-based and fail to provide solutions backed by clinical science. The few that are evidence-based are not personalizable; they’re merely a static collection of tools, exercises, and educational resources.
• Our app is unique in that it reproduces the dynamic process of CBT. Designed by clinicians and scientists, our solution is based on the best-available clinical evidence. And like traditional therapy, our app becomes more personalized the more an individual uses it.

Founders

Charles Ford, MD, PhD

Charles is a medical doctor and a neuroscientist passionate about improving mental healthcare. He completed his MD and his PhD in Neuroscience at Emory University, where his dissertation research focused on ways to enhance the efficacy of behavioral therapies.

Taggart Bowen-Gaddy

Taggart is a software engineer excited about human-computer interaction and entrepreneurship. For the last decade he has worked exclusively with startups, both large and small, as a Full Stack Engineer as well as a Team Lead.

Advisors

Jordan Cattie, PhD

Jordan is a clinical psychologist and an associate professor at Emory University. She specializes in third-wave CBT (e.g., Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT) and methods for increasing access to evidence-based mental healthcare.

Donovan Ellis, PhD

Donovan is a clinical psychologist and an assistant professor at Emory University. He specializes in digital mental health interventions and population-level implementation science to increase utilization of evidence-based mental healthcare.

Engineering Team

David Conner

David is a Software Engineer with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.