Gheorg's 2021 Reflection: +3,000 Downloads!
2021 was definitely an interesting year. For some, the year flew by in a flash, and for others, it crawled by.
Millions of people around Australia and the world were thrown into completely new and challenging scenarios. Mental health and healthcare has become one of the most important things in our lives.
Gheorg has supported many kids this year and we’ll be announcing some more news and insights about Gheorg really soon!
Just like we’ve been saying on our Hope Ninja Parents podcast, there’s lots to look forward to next year as well.
But now the year is coming to a close, it’s a good time to take a deep breath and reflect back on all that has been accomplished this year.
A word from our founder and psychologist Dr Louise Metcalf:
"It's been an awesome year for Gheorg. We are helping thousands of families now and really making a difference!
Next year we'll be doing more for kids with anxiety and driving real change for a more mentally healthy world!
We are so grateful to all our supporters in families, health and education this year, what a wonderful bunch of people! We love you.”
Below we’ve included a summary of everything Gheorg has been up to in 2021 including:
Gheorg app milestones - reaching +3,000 downloads!
Launching the Hope Ninja Parents Podcast and more podcast interviews
Programs, partnerships and publications
Conferences, panels and pitches with Gheorg founder Dr Louise Metcalf
Gheorg app milestones - reaching +3,000 downloads!
At Gheorg, our first priority is to support kids with anxiety. We do that through the Gheorg app that provides a space for:
Kids to check-in with their emotions and share how they’ve feeling,
Kids to practice gratitude and build mental resilience,
Kids can self-calm with breathing exercises when they feel stressed or panicked,
Kids learn through stories and friendly characters about different challenging emotions,
Kids can learn about and identify their strengths to build confidence (new feature),
Parents can track behaviours and see app usage (new feature)
The app includes the three main streams of psychological therapy used in Australia to treat childhood anxiety:
positive psychology for neuro-shaping balanced thinking,
cognitive behaviour therapy to help children understand the connections between thoughts, behaviours and emotions, and
acceptance commitment therapy to help children understand that difficult emotions can be okay.
This year, we launched a new feature in the app all about strengths. Does your child know their strengths? When we acknowledge and understand what we're good at, we're more likely to feel content within ourselves and share those strengths with others.
We also continued to develop the infrastructure for Gheorg to scale with new features and therapies.
We want Gheorg to be used all over the world - and we have exciting plans for the app in 2022!
We’ve seen a great impact of the Gheorg app and we’ll have some exciting insights released in 2022 about how Gheorg has helped kids.
Gheorg has +3,000 downloads!
We appreciate each and every supporter of Gheorg and the kids we’re trying to support.
In honour of Gheorg’s milestone of the being available on to download on the app stores for a year, we created the Gheorg is One colouring book with mindful designs for kids to relax, have fun and learn tips to improve their mental wellbeing.
If you have any feedback about the app, please feel free to get in touch with us or get in touch via social media. We love hearing ideas about how else we could be supporting kids with anxiety, and we always want to know how to make Gheorg better.
The launch of Gheorg’s Hope Ninja Parents Podcast
After speaking to countless parents about their kids mental health, and their own mental health as parents, Gheorg’s founder Dr Louise Metcalf wanted to do something more to support parents in these challenging times. So Louise is sharing her expertise after 30 years as a psychologist in conversation with Gheorg’s Schools Program Manager and Mindset Coach, Cynthia Painter, about HOPE and how hope can be a key tool for positive mental wellbeing.
They talk about what is hope and why it's important, how parents can focus more on hope, each episode includes a practical way you can integrate hope into your daily life and how to deal with challenging emotions.
Listen to Gheorg’s Hope Ninja Parents Podcast.
Programs, partnerships and publications
This year, our founder Dr Louise Metcalf has been working hard to get more support for kids with anxiety.
Gheorg’s involvement with world-class programs this year including SBE by Springboard Enterprises Life Science program and pitched at the Dolphin Tank event and Blackbird’s Giants program where she had access to world-class startup experts and advisors.
And just recently, it was announced that Gheorg is a part of the inaugural ANDHealth Digital Health cohort. It’s Australia’s only not-for-profit digital health commercialisation organisation and means that Gheorg will share in research funding - after 120 applications, almost 60 companies shortlisted, and only 5 were selected for the program.
Dr Louise is a lifelong learner and participated in two venture global focused programs including the New Chip VC program which aims to make founders investor ready - for founders who participate in the program it cuts 70% of the funding raising time. And Louise was accepted into the What If Ventures Fellowship - an 8-week healthcare startup program designed to support founders to build sustainable businesses.
In this e27 article: Moving mental health out of Freud’s era and beyond the couch with big data, Louise shared how many people experience mental health challenges, the effectiveness of mental health plans in Australia, wait times to see a psychologist and, outlines the use of big data and smart phones.
In an interview with Balance the Grind, Louise shared what an average week looks like as a tech founder and psychologist, her concept of ‘work-life meshing’, and her interesting perspective on perfectionism.
We ran our second book giveaway competition with leading speech pathologist Sonia Bestulic, and we shared two of her books with wonderful families! See one of the happy winners here!
Conferences, panels, and pitches with Dr Louise Metcalf
This year, Louise shared her experience far and wide of being a psychologist of 30 years and supporting kids with anxiety.
Here’s a few of the places Louise spoke this year:
Talking HealthTech Summit: Louise joined a panel of health professionals turned tech entrepreneurs to talk about what it’s like being at the coalface of health innovation. The panel included Laura Simmons from Theratrak Pty Ltd, Barry T. Nguyen from HealthAide, and Jack O'Brien from Clinic Mastery.
Tech23 discussion: Louise contributed to a discussion exploring how science and tech can help to mitigate and reduce symptoms of mental illness – helping us to flourish and find fulfilment alongside Jane Burns, Joshua Ismin of Psylo; Dr Prash P. of Enosis Therapeutics.
Unicorn Cup Expo: Louise was one of 500 startups involved with the Unicorn Cup event which attracted over 1,000 guests!
Young Startup Ventures: where Louise shared the big vision of Gheorg at one of their virtual summits.
Resi - Redefining Early Stage Investments: This event allowed Louise to connect Gheorg as an early stage product, with capital and channel partners across boarders and across domains!
More podcast appearances
We all know that storytelling is a powerful way to get a message across. And podcasts have provided our founder the opportunity to share her story, Gheorg’s story as well as tips to support our overall mental wellbeing.
This year, Louise was interviewed by:
Talking Health Tech in episode 152, Louise shared how robots can save our kids, breaking down the increasing rates of anxiety, ways to be more mindful around technology use and how we can support kids to improve their emotional intelligence. Watch out for more episodes coming out in 2021.
Mum Life Podcast - here Louise breaks down both anxiety in kids and anxiety in parents. Louise shares how to best manage anxiety as parents and how to best support kids with their anxiety.
Beanstalk Podcast - during the episode Louise shared four simple stress management tips to teach your kids.
HealthTechX Podcast - how this digital robot helps stem the rising tide of childhood anxiety.
Inspiring content for parents
We’re dedicated to sharing ideas that support parents and kids experiencing anxiety. This year we published a few blogs that supports families, including:
How practical life skills can improve your child’s outlook on life
Sensory bottles craft activity for engagement, self-esteem and mindfulness
Wow it’s been a big year! We wish everyone a very happy holiday season. We hope you can take the time to rest, restore and feel renewed for 2022.
As always, if you have any feedback for Gheorg, please get in touch with us here!
And we’ll see you in 2022!