The Story Behind Nahshii Health

I often tell people that Nahshii Health wasn’t founded in a boardroom — it was born out of lived experience, pain, and purpose.

My Journey
My journey started long before I ever imagined building an AI-driven mental health company. I grew up in a working-class Puerto Rican family. My mother worked in housekeeping for a large hospital system, then as her health deteriorated, she worked as a private housekeeper for two college professors. My father, in and out of the picture throughout my youth, worked in an aluminum mill, where he often worked swing shifts and used alcohol as his downer to sleep. In our household, strength was survival, not a slogan. We didn’t talk about mental health — not because we didn’t feel pain, but because silence was how we endured it. Like many kids from chaotic or underserved environments, I learned early to push through, to “be tough,” even when the weight was unbearable.

Then came the military — structure, purpose, camaraderie. But also trauma, loss, and the quiet epidemic I’d later dedicate my life to confronting: the 22 veterans per day who die by suicide. When I left the Army, I carried invisible wounds that didn’t show up on a medical chart. I also carried questions — about why access to culturally competent, affordable care was still so hard to find, and why so many of my brothers and sisters in arms were slipping through the cracks.

That search led me first into academia. I earned a Ph.D. in Psychology because I wanted to understand the why — why traditional therapy wasn’t reaching those who needed it most. Later, I pursued a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling because I wanted to be on the frontlines — to sit with veterans, minorities, and men like me and tell them they weren’t broken. But as I started counseling training, I realized something sobering: I could only see one client at a time. The system wasn’t built for scale. And for every person I helped, hundreds more waited weeks, months, or gave up altogether.

That’s when Nahshii Health was born — out of both heartbreak and hope.

The Birth of Nahshii Health
The name “Nahshii” comes from the Gwich’in Athabascan language, meaning “a place of healing.” It captures everything I wanted to build: a digital sanctuary that feels safe, inclusive, and deeply human. We’re creating an AI-powered counseling platform that doesn’t just respond — it understands. It listens like a therapist, adapts like a companion, and learns with cultural and emotional intelligence that reflects the communities it serves.

We’re not trying to replace human counselors — we’re amplifying their reach. We’re not automating empathy — we’re engineering access.

Nahshii Health was designed for the single mother in rural Texas who can’t afford therapy, for the veteran in San Diego who doesn’t trust a system that once failed her, and for the young Latino man in New York City who, like I once did, believes strength means silence.

Our Mandate
Every decision we make at Nahshii — from how our AI models are trained, to how we design user interfaces, to the voices and languages we support — is shaped by that lived understanding of stigma, culture, and identity. I know what it feels like not to be “seen” by the system. That’s why our mission is to make sure no one else has to feel that way again.

We’re building Nahshii Health at the intersection of science, soul, and technology — where empathy meets engineering, and healing meets accessibility. Because mental health care shouldn’t be a privilege; it should be a right.

And for me, this isn’t just a company. It’s the culmination of a lifetime — of surviving trauma, learning resilience, and finally creating a digital place of healing for those still fighting to find theirs. – Patrick M. Mendez, Ph.D.