Yunxinsheng Targets Millions of Perinatal Individuals with Specialized Mental Health Services, Files IPO Prospectus

The mental health sector has always been one of the hotspots attracting attention from various investment institutions.

The underlying reason is the large population in China with suboptimal mental health and psychiatric patients, resulting in substantial unmet needs in the field of mental health services.

However, most mental health service platforms tend to cater to a broader population when delivering their services. It is rare to find offerings specifically tailored to particular demographic groups—such specialization requires not only an accumulation of relevant mental health service resources but also profound insights into the specific patient populations affected by these conditions.

Yunxinsheng, which is committed to providing mental health services for individuals during pregnancy and the postpartum period, falls into the latter category.

Perhaps, some data suffice to illustrate the state of this niche segment within the mental and psychological health services sector.

According to statistics, China sees over 10 million new mothers each year. Among them, 60% to 80% experience varying degrees of anxiety and depression during pregnancy and the postpartum period, with nearly 20% developing clinical depression. This means that more than 8 million new mothers in China are far from happy every year.

On the other hand, approximately 33 million couples of reproductive age in China are currently affected by infertility. In May 2022, a team led by Academician Qiao Jie from Peking University Third Hospital published their latest research findings in The Lancet Global Health, which revealed that the overall prevalence of intimate partner violence among women with infertility was 47.2%, with psychological violence accounting for 51.5%.

 
There is a vast potential population of women who are trying to conceive, pregnant, or postpartum and at risk of developing mental health disorders, with substantial unmet demand for psychiatric and psychological services. This underserved market has motivated Jiang Aidong to enter the sector.

Jiang Aidong, Founder of Yunxinsheng

Jiang Aidong has previously served as a sales manager at multinational pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Merck & Co., and Ipsen. For nine years, he was dedicated to the sales of pharmaceuticals and medical devices in the maternal and child health sector. In 2018, he even founded a service-oriented company focused on infertility, obstetrics, pediatrics, and precocious puberty. His extensive experience in expanding businesses within the maternal and child health field enabled Jiang Aidong to identify a critical pain point: the mismatch between clinical needs—of both physicians and patients—and the available services.

In clinical practice, particularly for patients with infertility, clinicians face certain needs that are difficult to meet under the current healthcare system. For instance, providing emotional intervention services at specific stages of infertility treatment. Typically, psychiatric departments in hospitals primarily focus on prescribing pharmacological treatments. However, medication may not be suitable for individuals during pregnancy and the perinatal period. In contrast to reproductive centers in European and American hospitals, which are equipped with psychological counseling clinics, China places significantly insufficient emphasis on mental health support for the perinatal population.

Jiang Aidong was well aware of the implications of this demand. “If we rashly establish a company and recruit a team of mental health service providers to deliver psychological services, two possible outcomes may arise: one is an idealized scenario, in which patients achieve successful psychological recovery, thereby improving clinical treatment outcomes for physicians; the other is a relatively adverse scenario, in which the team’s insufficient understanding of diseases and unclear recognition of patients’ psychological issues could lead to unforeseen and serious consequences.”

To better address this issue, Jiang Aidong, founder and CEO of Yunxinsheng (Beijing Yunxinsheng Technology Co., Ltd.), served as one of the initiators in establishing the Psychological Branch of the Beijing Obstetrics and Gynecology Association, coinciding with the founding of Yunxinsheng in October 2021. In April 2022, the Psychological Branch of the Beijing Obstetrics and Gynecology Association was officially established, with more than 200 committee members participating. From a certain perspective, the establishment of the branch provides professional assurance for Yunxinsheng, enabling it to deliver specialized mental health services to individuals during pregnancy and childbirth in accordance with the standards and guidelines formulated by the association, thereby better supporting clinical physicians.

Jiang Aidong added, “Currently, the majority of our clients are individuals and couples experiencing infertility. During the provision of psychological services, patients often discuss the treatment process for infertility. If mental health providers lack understanding of this treatment trajectory, they may fail to truly comprehend the patients’ psychological state at their current stage, thereby hindering their ability to offer appropriate therapeutic interventions.” The establishment of this society, which includes reproductive medicine center directors and experts in the field of psychology, has not only facilitated the Yunxinsheng psychological service team’s learning about the clinical treatment processes for infertility but also enhanced the quality of perinatal mental health services through the contributions of these experts and directors. To date, Yunxinsheng has provided relevant mental health services to over 5,000 families affected by infertility.

The Yunxinsheng platform targets the perinatal population, with a particular focus on individuals experiencing infertility.

To a large extent, this is because individuals with infertility face greater difficulties and dilemmas. They are subjected to pressure from traditional societal expectations, while also confronting the risk of treatment failure. Women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) at assisted reproductive technology centers bear the risk of failure at every stage. Compared to women experiencing normal pregnancy and childbirth, they undoubtedly endure significantly greater psychological stress.

“Currently, the majority of our patient population is in the preconception stage. However, once patients successfully conceive, they naturally transition into the stages of pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing. The positioning of our perinatal mental health services and the bidirectional parenting platform is a natural extension based on this reproductive journey,” added Jiang Aidong.

Yunxinsheng Business Model

In fact, aligned with the platform’s natural strategic extension, Yunxinsheng does not solely target women; it also provides tailored mental health services to men in couples facing infertility, helping stressed male individuals alleviate pressure and emotional distress and better reintegrate into normal life.

In light of the evolving pandemic situation and the trend toward digitalization of psychological services, Yunxinsheng has developed and launched a digital app. It currently provides integrated psychological support to prenatal and postpartum clients through both its online app and offline psychological service centers. However, Jiang Aidong also noted that offline services offer greater warmth and a more human touch. The team is striving to transition more offline psychological service programs to online delivery, thereby further enhancing the accessibility of mental health services.

Currently, the online and offline services of Yunxinsheng are divided into two parts.

 
One category is one-on-one counseling. This type of service is primarily targeted at clients who are already undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment. Counselors with clinical training typically have a clear understanding of the client’s current treatment stage and psychological burden, and can often effectively intervene in the client’s psychological state after just four sessions. To maintain internal quality control and reduce the financial burden on clients, Yunxinsheng requires that the number of counseling sessions be limited to no more than eight. Currently, as most mental health services are provided by university professors and lecturers, the quality and effectiveness of the services are largely ensured.

Another category is group therapy courses. These sessions are typically limited to fewer than 20 participants, with a psychological counselor providing continuous accompaniment and therapeutic intervention throughout the process. Yunxinsheng helps clients alleviate emotional distress by employing more practical expressive arts therapy modalities, such as mindfulness-based writing, art therapy, dance/movement therapy, and psychodrama. Group therapy courses not only reduce the cost of psychological services but also further enhance their accessibility, thereby promoting public awareness of mental health services.

Currently, the Yunxinsheng platform is dedicated to advancing its distinctive “1+X” psychological service model, where “1” refers to specialized one-on-one counseling and “X” denotes companion-style group therapy courses. For Jiang Aidong, group therapy courses will be the core of Yunxinsheng’s future development. On one hand, individuals facing infertility often bear significant financial burdens, and group therapy courses can provide the mental health services they need at a lower cost. On the other hand, group therapy yields more direct results, enabling clients to achieve self-healing more rapidly while enhancing their self-awareness. Furthermore, since most clients grapple with common issues, group therapy courses can maximize the value of psychological counselors and therapists, thereby addressing patients’ problems more efficiently.

Unlike external mental health platforms that categorize users by psychiatric conditions such as anxiety and depression, the Yunxinsheng platform segments the perinatal population into five stages: preconception, first trimester, second trimester, third trimester, and postpartum. This approach enables more effective tiered management, thereby better assisting users in addressing their psychological concerns. For instance, upon accessing the Yunxinsheng platform, users are required to complete professional psychological assessment scales specific to the perinatal period. Based on the individual’s current psychological status, Yunxinsheng provides targeted services: group therapy courses are offered to general users, while one-on-one psychological counseling is provided to those with suboptimal mental health. When necessary, the platform may even recommend referral to a hospital’s psychiatry department for pharmacological treatment.

Exclusive Assessment Questionnaire for the Perinatal Period

To better ensure service quality, Yunxinsheng has fundamentally designed a comprehensive training and assessment system. In addition to routine psychological evaluations, Yunxinsheng also assesses counselors and therapists on their knowledge of patient disease treatment protocols, including key milestones in the treatment process and the corresponding mental health issues.

For offline psychological services, given the adoption of a direct-operated and franchise store model, Yunxinsheng has also implemented controls from the following perspectives to better achieve service standardization—

In terms of service quality output, Yunxinsheng provides training and performance evaluations for franchise stores that employ their own in-house counseling teams. Should the service quality of a franchise store’s counseling team fail to meet Yunxinsheng’s standards, Yunxinsheng will leverage its extensive network of partner universities to supply qualified mental health service professionals.

From an operational perspective, Yunxinsheng currently acquires clients primarily through referrals from clinicians at hospitals and assisted reproductive technology (ART) centers, resulting in a higher level of trust among these clients. Furthermore, it holds a certain advantage over the traditionally high customer acquisition costs.

And all of these have further contributed to the formation of its service ecosystem.

In fact, to better achieve a closed-loop business model, Yunxinsheng is jointly developing a VR psychodrama intervention system with partners such as the University of Science and Technology Beijing, aiming to enhance psychological interventions for perinatal clients across its online app, offline psychological service centers, and medical institutions.

Services Provided by the Yunxinsheng APP

Meanwhile, Yunxinsheng is jointly launching research projects in the field of perinatal mental health with multiple universities and hospitals, such as “Psychological Research on Women Undergoing Assisted Reproductive Technology Treatment,” “Research on Family Interaction Patterns During the Perinatal Period,” “Exploring the Quality of Reproductive Life Among Couples Conceiving Through In Vitro Fertilization,” and “Electronic Psychological Records for Families of Childbearing Age.” Through specialized academic research, Yunxinsheng aims to further develop digital therapeutics for psychological intervention tailored to perinatal families.

Building on its initial expansion in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Yunxinsheng is planning to replicate this model nationwide. Currently, Yunxinsheng is preparing for an angel financing round, with the proceeds primarily allocated to nationwide market expansion, research and development as well as iterative updates of group therapy courses, and the establishment of offline direct-operated stores.

For Jiang Aidong, the competitive advantage of Yunxinsheng lies in its focus on the niche population of pregnant and postpartum women and the provision of mental health services to this group. Going forward, it can leverage its accumulated real-world data to support academic research at universities and national-level projects through the intangible value of such data. Furthermore, building on its services for the perinatal population, the company can further expand into a comprehensive mental health service platform covering “all diseases.”

For example, coverage in the specialized field of oncology. With advancements in disease treatment technologies, the survival period for cancer patients has been further extended. However, cancer patients and their families still require appropriate psychological intervention and counseling to cope with conditions such as living with the disease. Currently, they are collaborating with experts in the field of oncology to conduct some exploratory initiatives.

“For Jiang Aidong, current psychological service platforms need to focus more on selecting specific disease subfields, delving deeper and more thoroughly into them, and providing visitors with more effective solutions through solid basic research. ‘Only in this way can we better promote the update and iteration of China’s mental health service sector into version 2.0,’ he added.”