About Akin Mental Health

Many families feel lost when a loved one is suffering with mental illness. They feel stuck and don't know where to turn. Akin provides guidance for those families so that they can move forward.

We're on a mission to meaningfully improve the wellbeing of families affected by severe mental illness.

Akin’s Family Program

Akin offers an online program for family members of loved ones with mental illness. We offer two levels of support through our program. First, we offer the Live Guidance tier which includes weekly live workshops over Zoom and an initial consultation call with an Akin Guide. Second, we offer a Self-guided tier which includes access to our video lessons and online community of other families.

The program’s core curriculum includes 12 lessons to give families evidence-based grounding in understanding mental illness, communication skills, problem solving, understanding treatment and preparing for crisis. Once members complete the core curriculum, we offer a Resilience group for ongoing support and group coaching.

The Science Behind Akin

Akin is inspired by family psychosocial support. These are programs with decades of evidence showing that they can dramatically reduce hospital visits of patients and can also significantly improve stress of family supporters, yet the availability and accessibility of these services is still rare. Instead families are often blocked out of the system entirely and deprioritized. At Akin, we’ve created a platform where families can access the core elements of family psychosocial support: education, community, and guidance wherever they are and whenever they’re ready to start.

Why we Founded Akin

Stephanie Greer and Matthew Montañez are two founders drawn together by a common experience: we both have family members who struggle with symptoms of severe mental illness. Specifically, Stephanie is the daughter to a mom with bipolar 1 disorder and psychotic symptoms. Matt, is the brother to a sibling with schizoaffective disorder. We know that navigating disorders like these can feel like riding a roller coaster in the dark.

Like the stories of so many other families, we’ve seen multiple hospitalizations and a mix of helpful and harmful treatments on a many year journey towards stability for our families and loved ones.

Thankfully, both our family members have found stability with these disorders with long term medication, therapy, and a supportive lifestyle with loving family. Motivated by these experiences, we are taking our lived-experience and technical careers and turning our attention towards making positive change for other families.

Professionally, we are technology leaders with over 20 years combined experience building technology and leading teams. Stephanie holds a PhD in neuroscience from UC Berkeley, and has led development of evidence based digital health products at Apple health special projects and Hopelab, and has consulted for many digital health startups. Matt has spent his career building software and leading technical teams. He has developed and implemented the technical strategy for multiple top App Store Health and Fitness apps.

Testimonials

What people are saying
about Akin

It was helpful to hear that someone has been where I am now. Hearing that your loved ones are living productive lives has given me hope for my daughter.
Father
of a daughter with schizoaffective disorder
Akin has really been a place to educate myself. To feel empowered and get support by other family members. To know that I’m not alone in this means the world to me. I really am so thankful to have this for myself.
Mother
of a son with schizophrenia
Very informative and really eye opening. I’ve definitely told my sister that she’s being dramatic, etc before and that lesson made me realize how important it is to listen and allow people to let things out.
Sister
of a sibling with depression
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Who we are

Akin is a group of scientists, tech developers, and other experts in effective mental health programs. Many of us have supported family members who have severe mental illness, and we all bring deep empathy and understanding to everything we do.

Stephanie Greer, PhD

Co-founder and CEO

Stephanie holds a PhD in neuroscience from UC Berkeley, and has led development of evidence based digital health products at Apple health special projects and Hopelab, and has consulted for many digital health startups.

Matthew Montañez

Co-founder and CTO

Matt has spent his career over the past 15 years building software at scale and leading technical teams. He has developed and implemented the technical strategy for multiple top App Store Health and Fitness apps.

Charlie Davidson, PhD

Clinical Lead

Charlie is a clinical psychologist with a PhD from Nebraska. For 15+ years, he has worked on psychosocial rehabilitation and recovery for and with people experiencing SMI, psychosis, and extreme states and their communities. He wrote a book on the topic and is active in research, advocacy, and professional leadership roles.

Brittany Troupe

Akin Guide

Brittany has championed personal and professional development during her 15 years in Human Resources. She is also a daughter, granddaughter, mother, and friend to many individuals living with serious mental illness, including Schizophrenia, Bipolar and Major Depressive Disorder. She is passionate about sharing hope and supporting through the heartache that so many of us experience.

Linda Boulton

Content Design Lead

Linda is an outcome-driven content strategist and learning designer with a reputation for delivering interactive learning experiences. She's developed innovative digital products to teach thousands of people how to support someone through a mental health crisis.

Shirley Glynn, PhD

Scientific Advisor

Dr. Glynn is a Research Psychologist at UCLA who has spent the past twenty years conducting research on psychosocial interventions, most especially family interventions, supported employment and social skills training, to support recovery from schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses.

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