At 24, Chakameh Shafii seemed to be doing everything right. She’d just graduated from a top university and landed a job at a Fortune 500 company.

But something was amiss.

“At work, I’d get these headaches and there was no one that could explain what that was,” said Shafii, who was having trouble eating and sleeping, too. “I had anxiety and I just didn’t know it.”

Encouraged by an aunt, Shafii underwent cognitive behavioural therapy, which helped with the anxiety. But she saw three therapists before landing on the one that suited her best — and at up to $180 per hour, that’s not something most can afford.

Now almost 26, she’s launched a startup in response to a mental health system she says is riddled with hurdles.

TranQool, the website she and former classmates Saeed Zeinali, Babak Shahabi and Mohamad Ahmadi created, matches users with cognitive behavioural therapists for 45-minute sessions over encrypted video chat that can be scheduled outside of business hours. Weekends are an option, too.

Each session costs $60 with therapists receiving a 75 per cent share.

Launched in February and in beta mode until May, TranQool’s aim is to reduce barriers to therapy, the top three of which her group has identified as affordability, accessibility and stigma.

TranQool is a kind of an Uber for the brain, but Shafii, who’s CEO, won’t call it that because of what the comparison might imply about the counsellors.

“One of the concerns that people have is the quality of our therapists … that’s why we like to completely explain the fact that this is not Uber,” she said.

“These are people who have years of experience and they’re doing this because they actually care about increasing accessibility to therapy.”

The online sessions may boost their income, but they are not a job replacement, she added.

TranQool conducts criminal record checks of the therapists, interviews them over the phone, then over video chat, Shafii said.

Together, she and her team put in $30,000 and received a $46,000 National Research Canada grant, which paid for three George Brown College students to help design and develop the website, and other costs, said Shafii.

“We’re not paying ourselves,” she added.

The website connects you with a counsellor in a three-step process that resembles setting up an Apple Music or Netflix account. Seventy per cent of users have come back for more sessions and the website has 250 users, Shafii said.

She and her colleagues have recruited most of the 60 therapists themselves, through the province’s colleges of social workers and psychologists.

Dima Dupéré, 50, who recently started a private practice in Ottawa, at first dismissed the email from TranQool trying to recruit her. “When I read it, I actually went, ‘Oh hey, this is cool,’” said Dupéré, who so far has held two sessions.

Originally from the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, Dupéré said the service can provide access to rural communities. (Shafii says its clients are mainly Toronto-based because of the team’s modest marketing efforts.)

Dupéré said the video format took some getting used to but that it “might be my age,” and has found ways to make it more comfortable, including more “chit-chat” at first.

Donna Ferguson, a psychologist with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, praised the format’s accessibility, but says she wonders whether some of the rapport between therapist and client may be lost through the medium.

Cognitive behaviour therapy requires a high level of engagement because of how practical it is, she explained.

“Little things like eye contact, body language, what’s happening during the sessions — I think that that’s the piece you might miss,” Ferguson said. “Someone (might be) saying one thing but their body language or their eyes are saying something different, so I say, ‘What just happened to you there?’ … and then using that to really dig into what’s going on.”

Sarah Lindsay has had three sessions with the same therapist so far and calls the concept “quietly revolutionary” because of how easy it is to choose a therapist.

Diagnosed with a mood disorder 10 years ago, Lindsay calls herself seasoned when it comes to therapy. “Five minutes in, it’s the same (as in-person),” she said of her first session.

It was a “little buggy at first,” she said, adding that most glitches seem to have been fixed. If she could improve TranQool, she’d add a page for people who have done therapy before with an option to list past diagnoses.

That could be easily done, according to the group’s adviser, Ottawa psychiatrist Dr. Sanjay Rao, who specializes in cognitive behavioural therapy. He said that when he first heard from the entrepreneurs, he thought it would be a one-off thing, “but they persisted.”

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“I feel that here is a group of young Canadians with experience with therapy — and they’re innovating, so I think we should recognize them for that.”

How TranQool works

Chakameh Shafii, TranQool’s CEO and co-founder, says one of its customers described the website’s design as “an extension of their home.” Shafii says that the team wanted to make sure that when you sign up, “you don’t feel like you’re in a clinical environment.” This is what the process looks like.

Sign up

The sign up page is a quick fill — it asks for your full name, email and a password.

Feelings

The feelings page is similar to setting up Apple Music or Netflix accounts. It has you pick how you’re feeling today and then asks which emotions and thought processes you’d like to work on.

Profile

A profile with check marks based on your selections on the feelings page is next. On it, you can choose one of 47 languages you’d like to speak with your therapist (though the algorithm that matches you prioritizes your feelings selection over language choice). You can edit your profile any time.

Therapist matches

Based on what a user feels and what language they chose, TranQool suggests three therapists whose specialty fits with what users want to work on. There’s an option to scroll through its roster of therapist profiles, which can be filtered by gender, language and specialty — from work-related problems to eating disorders. You can also see what their availabilities are like.

Dashboard

The dashboard is where users can see when their appointments are and schedule new ones. There’s also a post-it-note-like space users can type a “positive reminder” on. Later this spring, users will be able to log their moods as they go, so they can see if the sessions are helping or not.

Assignments

Eight PDFs of cognitive behavioural therapy exercises are included on the site to help users track and identify their thought patterns.

Appointments

The appointments page tracks past and upcoming appointments.