A True Story Behind SwayMind
For a long time, I believed I was depressed.
It wasn’t a sudden realization - it was a slow, persistent feeling. I felt bad about myself, about my work, about my relationships. There was always a quiet weight in the background. And it made sense, at least on paper. One of my parents had been dealing with depression for years. I knew the role inheritance can play. It felt almost inevitable.
By the time I turned 40, things became heavier.
I had spent over a decade as an AI scientist, earned a PhD, built systems, led teams. Then I lost my job. The feeling worsened. Two months later, I found a better job - with a higher salary - but nothing changed internally. Soon after, I lost that job too. And this time, it hit harder. Not just financially, but personally.
It felt like confirmation of what I already believed:
Something is wrong with me.
The Turning Point
Around that time, I started thinking about building something of my own - a startup shaped by everything I had learned in AI.
At a social event in Manhattan, I met a psychiatrist. We talked about treatments, about patients, about how mental health is evaluated. And at some point, the conversation turned inward - I started questioning my own condition more seriously.
That night changed everything.
The Problem I Couldn’t Ignore
I began researching mental health evaluation tools.
And what I found surprised me.
Most existing methods are subjective.
They rely on questionnaires—forms where you rate how you feel, how you think, how you perceive yourself. But these answers are filtered through mood, memory, bias… even self-deception. We can misunderstand ourselves. We can underreport. We can exaggerate. We can simply not know.
In contrast, when we evaluate physical health, we don’t rely on opinions.
We use blood tests - objective measurements based on biological signals.
So I asked myself a simple question:
Why don’t we have the equivalent of a “blood test” for mental health?
Building SwayMind
That question became an obsession.
With the help of my friends and advisors, I started building a system that combines three layers:
Self-rating (what you believe about yourself)
Clinical questionnaires (validated psychological scales)
Objective voice-based analysis (what your behavior actually reveals)
Using AI, I developed voice agents that analyze not just what you say, but how you say it—capturing vocal biomarkers, linguistic patterns, and emotional signals. These are then processed by multiple models to estimate mental health indicators.
This system became SwayMind.
The Moment of Truth
Then I used it on myself.
Here’s what it showed:
My self-perception suggested mild depression and anxiety
Clinical questionnaires showed low depression, but something unexpected
The strongest signal across objective and clinical measures was ADHD
Not depression.
ADHD.
A Shift in Understanding
That realization changed everything.
What I had interpreted as failure, low mood, or lack of consistency… was actually something else. A different cognitive pattern. A different way of operating.
And more importantly:
ADHD is not just a weakness—it can be a strength.
With the right awareness and structure, it can drive creativity, energy, and unconventional thinking. It can be an advantage.
I wasn’t broken.
I was misunderstood—by myself.
Why SwayMind Matters
That experience became the foundation of my startup.
SwayMind is not just a product. It’s a new way of thinking about mental health:
From subjective → to measurable
From assumption → to insight
From late diagnosis → to early detection
This short video demonstrates why SwayMind matters: https://youtu.be/Mzg3d0dik8U
Mental health conditions are real, serious, and often invisible.
Just like physical health, they require regular evaluation.
We don’t wait until something is critically wrong to do a blood test.
We shouldn’t wait for a crisis to understand our mental state either.
The Bigger Message
Understanding yourself accurately can change your life.
It can prevent years of misinterpretation.
It can guide better decisions.
It can unlock strengths you didn’t know you had.
SwayMind was born from a personal question.
Today, it aims to answer that same question for millions:
What is really going on inside me?