This New Start Up is Making Mental Health a Priority

Headquartered in London, Sanctus is headed by James Routledge and has used mental health and the importance of it as their fuel to run a successful business. Sanctus is helping businesses across the UK and London specifically with their therapy sessions that focus on the mental health of employees and people from every walk of life. Routledge himself suffered from severe anxiety attacks when he was running his first startup to the point where it became unbearable and lead to him giving up his dream.

Using this as his foundation and inspiration, he built Sanctus so that employees around Britain’s capital can focus on their mental health and employment issues as much as they focus on work. His own experiences allow James to relate better, understand better and run his company better. His final aim is to make mental health as important as physical health.

Knowing how well brands sell and how people can latch on to them overnight, he considered making mental health and therapy a brand of its own. Rather than viewing it as just therapy, people will begin to associate it with a brand of its own. James and his team aim at being the ‘Nike of mental fitness’ and have strived for a while now to reach out to more people including employees form Redbull, Aviva and BCG.

The belief behind Sanctus is to enable people to be their full selves while also normalizing conversations that surround mental health and making it a more approachable conversation topic. James and his business partner George Bettany are aiming at solving one of the biggest problems that face Britain and the world at large today with 16 million people in the UK suffering from mental illness.

The need for mental health treatment is growing by the minute with a lack of resources to cater to the growing demand. Many young adults are left with nowhere to turn with the average wait for therapy being 2 years in the UK. Sanctus’ main aim is to get Britain a step closer to solving that problem. Their coaches are considered personal trainers for mental health and are all professionally trained and qualified to help people improve their mental health or deal with mental illnesses. They are gradually growing in numbers with 13 staff members and over 400 people attending their coaching sessions. Sanctus continues to make therapy more normal by giving people the ability to start a conversation in a group and continues to give people someone to talk to so that their days gradually start getting better.