Building the Foundation for Mental Health Equity
Joisu is a startup using emerging technology to build the products, research, and policy foundations mental health care is missing, so support reaches people before they're in crisis, not just after.
THE PROBLEM
Mental Health Care Is Episodic, Crisis-Driven, and Unequally Resourced
The system is good at measuring and paying for what happens after someone reaches crisis. It's much worse at funding what keeps people from getting there — timely access, follow-through on referrals, and support between appointments.
Individual experience
61.5M
U.S. adults had a mental illness in 2024
6.1M
untreated adults reported an unmet need for care
48%
of adults with mental illness received no treatment in the past year
Population & system reality
157M
people live in federally designated mental-health shortage areas — 45% of the U.S. population
30-50%
of patients received follow-up within 7 days of a mental-health ED visit
$5.6B
cost of U.S. ED visits involving mental- or substance-use disorders in 2017, the most recent diagnosis-specific national estimate available
We fund the crises we can see. We under-measure — and underfund — the supports that keep people engaged before and between them.
OUR APPROACH — THREE PILLARS
We Build Across Product, Research, and Policy
Closing the mental health equity gap takes more than a single app. Joisu works at three levels at once.
Feel Good Engine works across three levels of mental health care: it supports patients between sessions with personalized micro-interventions and peer support, gives clinicians a thought partner and real visibility into how those weeks actually went, and gives community and population health leaders real-time insight into what people need at scale.
Product
We study what actually keeps people engaged in care — not just what gets them into it once. Our research looks at continuity, cultural relevance, and real-world outcomes across the communities we build for, so what we ship is grounded in evidence rather than assumption.
Research
We're building toward being a recognized voice at the intersection of emerging technology, AI, and mental health — helping shape how these tools get used responsibly in care, and pushing for infrastructure and funding decisions based on unmet need and engagement, not utilization alone.
Policy
OUR COMMITMENT TO RESEARCH & REFLECTING DIVERSE EXPERIENCES
We Build Across Product, Research, and Policy
Mental health care fails differently for different people. Access gaps, cultural mismatch, and lack of representation compound the core problem of a system that's already too episodic and crisis-driven. Joisu's research is built to reflect that reality, not smooth over it:
We prioritize underserved and under-researched populations in how we study engagement and design interventions. This isn't an afterthought; it's a starting condition.
We treat data ethically. Insight generated through our research and our products is used to expand access and inform better resource allocation, never to profile or penalize the people it's meant to help.
We build with culturally relevant practices, not one-size-fits-all defaults, informed by input from the communities, clinicians, and organizations we serve.
We publish and share what we learn, so the evidence behind our approach, and the gaps we're still working to close, stays visible instead of proprietary.