Fika: Why this start-up wants to make emotional workouts as important as gym sessions

Do you exercise every week? What about working on your emotional fitness?
Luis Quintero / Unsplash
Amelia Heathman2 May 2019

Fika is an important concept in Swedish culture, centred around sharing coffee or food with friends or colleagues and taking some time to talk.

It’s an appropriate name for health start-up Fika, a Bethnal Green-based company which wants to move the dial on mental health through conversation and encourage people to build up their emotional fitness.

“What we’ve done with our language over the years is we use the phrase mental health and what we are referring to is mental illness. We’ve created this huge problem with stigma,” explains Fika’s CEO Nick Bennett.

“For the last two years we’ve been developing something focused on prevention in this space.”

Here’s what you need to know about Fika and emotional fitness

Emotional fitness: the hot new workout

Bennett started out running a digital ad agency before leaving to venture into the world of start-ups and product building. After creating various apps linked to his background in advertising, everything changed in 2014 when he lost his close friend Ben to suicide.

“I spent a long time really wrestling with did I do something wrong, did he do something wrong, and pointing the fingers everywhere,” he says. “It was a pivot point for me … I set about how to take myself out of the businesses I was in to look at the problems in the emotional health spectrum.”

This is how Fika came about – an app which focuses on building up emotional fitness, in the way you would physical fitness. Bennett likens it to the 7 Minute workout app. “It’s very simple, seven minutes and you work out. [Fika] is five minutes, an emotional workout. Just like the other one, there’s loads of benefits.”

The benefits of working on emotional fitness include improved focus, confidence and resilience. Fika worked with seven psychologists to create content in the app, borrowing from theories behind cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and solutions-based therapy to create emotional exercises covering areas such as goal power, positivity, adaptability, confidence and relationships.

Nick Bennett, CEO of Fika
Fika

The app is designed to be used alone or face-to-face with a friend, to encourage the building of confidence and relationships. Exercises may cover positivity, such as thinking about what you’re grateful for today, or how to set goals to achieve what you want.

"We had to learn to get used to working out and doing pull-ups. This is the same," says Bennett.

Where can I download Fika?

Unfortunately, you can’t download Fika on the App Store, the way you can with other wellness apps like Headspace or Calm. Currently Fika is exclusively working with UK universities, including Lincoln, Exeter, Manchester Metropolitan and Coventry, who make the app available to their students.

Why this focus on students? According to the Mental Health Foundation, over 15,000 first-year students reported they had a mental health problem in 2015-2016, up from 3,000 10 years earlier. Students who face problems are also more likely to drop out of university altogether.

“The service is for universities who provide it for their students so they can use it for free,” explains Bennett. “We’re developing the product so it works and will begin rolling out larger trials with all of the partners throughout the rest of the year.”

Partnering with universities also allows Fika to carry out empirical research into the impact of the app, to prove it works. There are plans to make the app available for mainstream use but they are way down in the pipeline.

“We have to be focused because we’re a young business with big ambitions. Higher education is where we’re starting,” says Bennett.

The app features five-minute emotional fitness workouts
Fika

It makes sense to keep the app small and focused, rather than pursue millions of downloads at the expense of the user base. Mindfulness apps are often criticised by using the very device that is accused of contributing to anxiety. Bennett’s perspective is that it’s important to engage with tech because it’s not going away.

“Instead of pointing the blame at [smartphones], why don’t we look at how we can use it, and find the way to use technology to contribute better and make an impact? Tech is an enabler and if you enable good habits then you’re doing a good thing and using tech in an impactful way,” he adds.

Overall, Fika wants to change the way we as a society views and discuss mental health to help shift the way it is tackled.

“We need to be brave as a culture. It’s time for us as a nation to stand up, and say let’s normalise emotional fitness, make it habitual, and address the terrible imbalance between the importance placed on physical fitness and the missing importance on emotional fitness,” says Bennett.

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