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Chandler CEO launching kids' mental health app

Tribune - 2/20/2023

Feb. 18—While everyone else was learning how to make sourdough bread during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Ben Smith was learning how to launch an app that asks users a single question but could hold many answers in the youth mental health crisis.

Smith is founder/CEO of GnosisIQ, an artificial intelligence software company based in Chandler that partnered with nonprofits Death2Life and notMYkid to provide Arizona teens with immediate access to mental health and emotional support resources.

Smith wants to revolutionize education and considers this the next step in his company's mission to help young people excel.

"The best way to engage with kids is to make it universal, comfortable, approachable and something they're familiar with," Smith said.

The GnosisIQ app checks all those boxes with kids answering a single question: "How are you feeling?"

They answer by picking one of 12 emojis: happy, confident, excited, content, bored, confused, mad, sad, stressed, sick and tired, and depressed. The app records their answers by date and time of day to help track a student's well-being.

Gnosis IQ can help predict and track a student's success. It also leverages academic research, artificial intelligence and educator insight to support the holistic success of K-12 students.

Smith said Gnosis IQ allows teachers, administrators, and parents to know how students perform academically and their state of mind at any given time through individualized dashboards.

For those concerned about privacy, Smith said the app doesn't record location, opting instead for a simpler record-keeping, like that of a journal.

"While the software is free, we don't sell the data," Smith added.

Because the data belongs to the user, Smith said they can access it anytime like a journal.

"What I didn't expect was for this tool to replace what used to be journaling,' Smith said. "I used to keep a little notepad next to my bed, I'd scribble down thoughts and such, and I would just do bullet points. And for a lot of kids, this is replacing that."

Smith said tech companies haven't really innovated much on behalf of education, and this app could be the beginning.

"They focus on aerospace, and the military and different aspects of business, banking, and so on," Smith said. "No one really innovates in education."

"We're 100% self-funded, and now I'm just looking to maintain that so I don't go bankrupt," Smith said.

Both nonprofits partnering with him have a similar vision of finding innovative ways to assist struggling youth amid a shortage of counselors and emotional support specialists on school campuses.

Dawna Allington, director of peer programs at notMYkid based in Scottsdale, said partnering with Gnosis IQ provides a way to find youth who need support.

"My hope is that the software Gnosis IQ provides will find the individuals who would not otherwise ask for help and allow us the opportunity to assist them," Allington said.

Whether teens need to talk to someone day or night, they will have access to a Death2Life counselor through notMYkid's [I]nspired program app, which connects youth with a certified peer support specialist who has a wide variety of life experiences so that talking about life's problems becomes a little more relatable for teens.

According to the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Arizona schools have more than 700 students for one school counselor and a more than 3,000 students for one social worker. Those ratios should be 250-to-1.

For school psychologists, Arizona's ratio of 1,593-to-1 is more than three times the suggested 500-to-1.

"I don't want lack of funding to result in the death of a student," Smith said.

Smith started this venture as a big supporter of Alice Cooper'sSolid Rock Foundation and found out about notMYKid and Death2Life through a few "coincidental connections" at some of Solid Rock's events.

"And it quickly became apparent that we were really out to help the same kids," Smith said.

Smith said the software directly connects students with counselors and peer advisors to organizations that want to help.

Smith knows all too well the struggles kids face — not only with three kids of his own and one foreign exchange student living with his family — but also from his own life.

He grew up in Arizona and struggled academically with an undiagnosed case of dyslexia.

In fifth grade at Yavapai Elementary School in Scottsdale, Smith discovered his passion for computers.

"I remember going into that computer lab in the library and interacting with a computer for the first time and just loving it," Smith said. "Just seeing all the potential that it had."

At Coronado High School, Smith continued his fascination with computers and was given the opportunity to accelerate his learning.

As a sophomore, Smith sat "completely bored" in an online learning class reading prompts and answering questions, albeit repetitive and unengaging. So Smith decided to have some fun with the system.

Admitting to this much later, Smith hacked the system, passed his way through the class and spent the rest of the time designing an interactive online learning platform that Smith said he couldn't have designed without the teachers and lab aides fostering his learning.

"That supported me through experimenting with coding and developing and building out something that ultimately other students would be able to use," Smith said.

With computers on the forefront of Smith's mind, mental health also sat heavy on his mind.

His mother suffered from mental health issues and addiction problems, and though her death in 2009 isn't classified as suicide "it was really self-inflicted over time," he said.

As a nurse, his mom would know how to work the system to fill multiple prescriptions at different locations in a single day, and to this day, Smith has vivid memories of his mother's struggles with prescription narcotics.

"She started mixing the batter and then passed out in the middle of making my birthday cake," Smith said.

Smith said he designed the app at a third-grade level because that's the age children start to read or at least understand and recognize what's going on around them. But, he added, it doesn't look childish for teenagers in high school.

Gnosis IQ is scheduled to launch on Jan. 31 in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and Smith said he hopes this will usher in a new era in the youth mental health crisis.

"It's really something that I hope will hopefully be a true innovation in education, supporting kids going forward," Smith said.

For more info, visit gnosis-iq.com.

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