A Kinder Approach to Mental Health Awareness

Fordham Newsroom

The KindMind team: Francesca Zambrano, Mariella Sypa,Steven Sypa, Weiyu Shen, Elle Bernfeld, and Elijah BullardMay marks Mental Health Awareness Month, and for many sufferers of mental illness, social stigma and proximity to treatment still remain some of the biggest roadblocks to mental wellness.
Three Fordham students are hoping to revolutionize and reshape those two facets of mental health treatment.
“We have all these different fitness apps out there, so we figured, why not create a similar model for mental health patients?” said Mariella Sypa, a sophomore at Fordham College at Lincoln Center.
The founders of KindMind Mental Wellness Mobile Technology see their start-up program as a mental “fitness” app.
Teaming up for innovation
At TrepCon, the team (gathered around Joseph Halpin, president of the Entrepreneurship Society) took first place in a pitch competition.(Photo by Taylor Michie)
The KindMind team includes five founders—two of them Fordham students and one a recent graduate, Weiyu Shen, GSAS ’16. Sypa manages operations and business strategy along with her brother, Steven Sypa, who handles legal matters.
The team also includes Elijah Bullard, who will graduate from Fordham this year with a master’s in computer science, and Elle Bernfeld, a licensed therapist who heads KindMind’s creative development. Undergraduate student Francesca Zambrano helps with front-end development.
The app is the brainchild of Mariella Sypa and Bullard, who came up with the idea in February of 2016 after having met at Fordham while studying computer science.
Shen, who graduated with a master’s in computer science, joined the duo as the chief technology officer in April of last year.
The KindMind app team won a pitch competition this past February at TrepCon, sponsored by the   Entrepreneurship Society at Fordham, Adobe, and Deloitte.
With features like mood tracking, a mood diary, and easy access to mental health providers, KindMind aims to benefit both first-time users and ...

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