Thank you, Madam Chair.
My name is Emmanuel Akindele. I am the founder and CEO of Blue Guardian, a mental health early warning system that uses AI to detect mental health issues in young people and connect families with important mental health resources.
My journey with Blue Guardian started in high school, where I faced mental health issues, specifically anxiety. I remained silent about this issue I was facing and bottled it in without reaching out to anybody else. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one to do this. I am part of the first generation to grow up with ubiquitous Internet connection. It amplified issues that my classmates felt, like depression, body image issues, self-harm and ultimately suicide.
I had left high school, and I had told myself that this was not normal and that something needed to be done so that the next generation gets better. After researching potential solutions, I started Blue Guardian, a mental health software that uses AI to detect issues in young people. The way it works is kind of like auto-correct but for mental health.
A parent and a child get together and download it on the kid's phone. As that kid types, that text is sent to an AI model, but instead of being trained to detect grammar, it's trained to detect mental health cues. We do this without storing any text data, maintaining the child's complete and total privacy. Our mission is to work with schools all over Canada to detect mental health issues and connect families with mental health resources.
I sit here with great optimism that this committee is studying the mental health crisis facing young people, especially young girls. This is why I am confident that with our individual convictions, the task of advancing our shared goals moves forward. Our commitment is to ensure that young people have greater accessibility to mental health resources, regardless of socio-economic circumstance. Our commitment is to break the stigma surrounding mental health and promote a culture that allows young people to says it’s okay to not be okay—it’s okay to seek help.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my story with you. I'm happy to be able to speak with you on such an important topic.