When he was 10 years old, Patrick Gilligan’s childhood struggle with food began. Placed on a caloric-restrictive diet by a doctor, the regime left him feeling ashamed and alone and triggered what would become a more than decade-long eating disorder. “I still look back on all the time that I spent as a teen, crushed by stigma and afraid to talk about mental health with my friends and family,” says the Stanford grad.
Years later, when a grad school classmate took their own life, Gilligan felt compelled to leave his masters program at Stanford – where he earlier obtained a product design degree – to help solve the youth mental health crisis.
Called Somethings, Gilligan’s now 14-month-old, New York-based startup is the outcome of that effort. As Gilligan describes it, Somethings is a youth-specific wellness platform that connects teenagers with trained mento...
