My World Fell Apart This Summer

This year did not go the way I expected. I began it with hope and discipline, taking part in a forty-day prayer and fasting program at my church. I believed it would be my best year. Instead, by summer, the life I had built fell apart. Several of my worst fears happened one after another, and every backup plan I had failed. What surprised me was not the collapse itself, but my response. I felt calm, even as everything was breaking. That calm led me to a new question: why did my mind react this way, and why do we still lack clear answers about how the brain works when life overwhelms us?

That question shifted my path. I realized psychiatry does not yet have the same kind of objective measures that most other areas of medicine rely on. Diagnoses are based mostly on symptoms and what patients say, which makes treatment uncertain. My search for better answers drew me into a new field called computational psychiatry. It uses data, math, and technology to understand the brain more precisely. At the same time, I also learned how important human care is in mental health. My collapse set me on a mission: to bring these two sides together, building objective tools that support psychiatry while keeping the human touch at its center.

I was in a race against time. I wanted to build and successfully exit a software company before Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, changed everything. My team and I used the newest AI tools to build products that impressed people. We got meetings and praise, but not enough paying customers. I do not think it was because I lacked skill. I can design products and talk to customers. The real issue was that I did not have a strong network to sell into big companies, and I always delayed talking to investors, waiting until I had a proven product. Looking back, I see that this habit may have slowed me down.

When things started to go wrong, I tried every backup plan I had. Nothing worked. Within days, several of my deepest fears became real. I felt numb. The foundation of the life I knew cracked all at once. For the first time, I felt complete surrender. There was no immediate way out.

But something surprising happened. I did not fall apart. Instead, I became calm. My blood pressure during that time never went above 108/62, the lowest reading of my adult life, even when everything I built was breaking down. My friend J always told me I did not know how to ask for help, and I saw he was right. I leaned on my therapist, and my family prayed for me. But I still had one question that kept turning in my mind: why was I so calm while my world was collapsing?

That question is what pulled me into mental health. I wanted an answer. My search led me to read widely about psychology and psychiatry. I found that therapy helps, but it has limits. In most areas of medicine, doctors rely on objective tests: blood work, imaging scans, or lab results. Psychiatry is different. Diagnosis depends mostly on symptoms and what patients report. The problem is that symptoms often overlap, and self-reporting can be unreliable. This means diagnosis is slow, confusing, and sometimes wrong. Without objective markers, psychiatry today is in a place similar to medicine before the discovery of germs.

This trial-and-error system makes treatment hard. Current classifications like the DSM(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) are not very strong scientifically. That is why half of adults with depression do not improve on antidepressants or antipsychotics 1. Development of new drugs has stalled. The last major advance was Clozapine in the 1980s 2. Psychiatric drug trials also face extra hurdles. Unlike cancer drugs, which are judged against existing treatments, brain drugs must be judged against a placebo. This doubles the cost and lowers the chance of success. On average, it takes 13 years and costs $1 billion to bring a psychiatric drug to market, compared with 5 years and $300 million for cancer 3.

This made me curious about new ways forward. I discovered a field called computational psychiatry. It applies math, data, and computer models to study how the brain works when it is healthy and when it is not. It also connects to a larger movement called Precision Psychiatry, which aims to improve diagnosis and treatment by using genetic tests, brain scans, and molecular data. The goal is to combine biological and behavioral measures with symptoms. If done well, this could give psychiatry the kind of objective data that other areas of medicine already have.

But here I also saw the limits. Many AI start-ups promised to transform drug discovery but failed. The problem is not only the math. It is that we still know very little about our own biology. Without enough reliable data, even the best models cannot perform well. Under pressure, some companies aimed at easy targets, leading to drugs that were no better than what already existed 4. This showed me that my ambition needs to be cautious and realistic.

To ground myself in reality, I decided to step into the field directly. I now work part-time as a mental health worker while still building in tech. This gives me a close look at the daily struggles patients face and the challenges clinicians deal with. My goal is to create AI tools that support psychiatry, not replace it. I want to build computational methods that help us better understand how the brain is organized and how it changes during illness.

I also see how this connects to the workplace. Mental health problems cost the global economy $1 trillion each year and lead to the loss of 12 billion working days 5. Cases of depression rose 25 per cent during the pandemic, and the numbers have not returned to normal. Companies often claim to support mental health, but many workers do not feel safe speaking up. One in three workers say they would not tell their boss about a mental health need 5. Half of those who do share report facing discrimination. Employee assistance programs exist, but most people never use them. Real change happens when managers are trained to listen and make workloads manageable, not just when companies make public promises.

The problem is even sharper in medicine. In 2023, 45 per cent of physicians reported burnout [AMA]. Many avoid care because of licensing and credentialing forms that ask about past treatment. Even though the AMA has pushed for questions to focus only on current impairment, fear still keeps doctors silent.

Pilots face similar issues. Their mental health is closely monitored, but disclosure can end careers. One pilot said that therapy no longer felt safe after the FAA used his therapy notes against him 6. Another said the need to appear perfect on paper kept him from seeking help at all. Experts warn that if pilots do not get early treatment, the result can be dangerous lapses in focus and safety.

In many countries, the gap between demand and resources is even wider. Low-income countries often have fewer than two mental health workers for every 100,000 people. Task-sharing, where trained non-specialists provide care, has proven effective. One study found that patients were two and a half times more likely to recover when treated by lay workers from their own community than when treated by a psychiatrist 7. The Trieste model in Italy shows how a community approach can work. After closing asylums, the city invested in local services. Care is open to all without a doctor’s referral, and the focus is on teamwork and respecting people as citizens with rights. Franco Basaglia, the pioneer of this model, said the goal was to "put the illness in parentheses" 8 so that the person, not just the disorder, is seen.

My personal collapse made me look at paths I had not considered before, including medical school, a PhD in psychology, or nursing school. These paths are long, but they give the clinical depth I need. Experts agree that the future of psychiatry must combine both science and social care. Precision medicine will add to, not take away from, the human touch that good psychiatrists already bring 9.

This summer, my worst fears happened. Yet in the middle of it all, I found calm, and that calm led me to a new direction. My ambition is no longer just about building with technology. It is also about healing with people. I began this year with faith, and I carry that same faith into this mission: to help give mental health what it has lacked for too long, answers that are both scientific and human.