A letter from our founder
Every person deserves care that is matched to them, measured, and delivered by someone they trust.
I started MindMatch because, for too many people, that is still not true.
I lost my father to suicide. He is one of the 720,000 people the world loses this way every year. Each of them was someone's father, mother, son or daughter. Each of them left people behind, asking what could have been different. I carry that question with me every day.
I spent years as a high-performance athlete. Sport taught me that nobody reaches their best on talent alone. The body needs continuous, dedicated care, adjusted to each person, because no two people are built the same. The mind is no different. We are all wired differently, and we have all lived different lives. Yet in mental health, most people still get a generic answer, once in a while, and are left to hope it works.
As an international mental health advocate, I have listened to many stories in many countries. The people change. The endings are often the same. They waited too long. They didn't know what kind of help they needed. They found someone by chance, and when it didn't fit, they gave up. Half of the people who come to MindMatch waited more than a year before asking for help.
Along the way, I became an ally to psychologists, and I learned their pains up close. Most work alone. Their days fill up with calendars, invoices and missed appointments. They give everything to their patients, yet very few have the tools to see whether therapy is working. In a recent study, therapists recognised only one in eight clients who were getting worse. That is not a failure of care. It is a failure of the system around them.
My years in technology showed me what the right platform can do for people who are overwhelmed. And in therapy, we already know what works. When people are matched to a psychologist's real strengths, they improve about twice as much. When progress is measured, people going off track are far more likely to recover. When the work continues between sessions, the gains last. None of this needs new science. Psychologists just need a platform they can trust to bring it into their practice.
That trust has to be earned. So we build for the psychologist, never instead of one. Psychologists set their own prices and their own rules. Their patients stay theirs. The psychologist decides, and the technology supports the decision.
That is what MindMatch is for. The right match, care you can see working, and psychologists who never have to do it alone.
We are building a world where nobody has to guess their way to care. That is the work. I hope you'll join us.
João Francisco LimaFounder & CEO, MindMatch
If you're going through a hard time, you don't have to face it alone. In Portugal, call SNS 24 on 808 24 24 24.
Sources: WHO (deaths by suicide). MindMatch onboarding survey, n = 186. Østergård et al., Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 2024. Constantino et al., JAMA Psychiatry, 2021 (improvement ratio derived from reported estimates). Lambert, Whipple & Kleinstäuber, Psychotherapy, 2018. Kazantzis et al., Behavior Therapy, 2016.
