COLORADO SPRINGS – Jonathan Wilson said the transition from Navy SEALS to civilian life was one of the most difficult things he has ever done. He called it a dark period in his life.

He went from the strict military structure to living life without purpose and without his team, as he himself said.

“Sometimes I say it’s quite similar to prison. You wake up, you know what you’re going to do that day. You know what you’re going to do for the next two years,” Wilson said. “You have food. You have training. “We know where we are going to go.”

Wilson got a job working for Goldman Sachs. He said everyone congratulated him, but he had no passion or purpose. But he also suffered from his time in the army. He served two different terms for 15 years in total. He had PTSD, lost friends and wasn’t feeling well.

“One day I was driving to work and I didn’t even know what had happened, but I just remember looking over the bridge I was driving on and thinking, ‘How easy would that be?’” Wilson said when asked if ever experienced suicidal ideation. “And that’s not a thought I normally have, is it?”

Wilson sought help and was dissatisfied with the VA. He gave credit to the doctors and staff, but said bureaucracy and the size of the organization made it difficult for him.

He first started a foundation to help other service members transition to civilian life with job placement and education.

But in 2017, everything changed when they lost their first partner to suicide.

“We actually had a SEAL we were supposed to meet with on Monday morning. “Our foundation was helping this SEAL transition and over the weekend he shot himself,” Wilson said. “So to lose the first time in 2017, fast forward to 2024, in that short period, we lost a lot of really good men to suicide because they felt like they had no other option. They felt that the system was failing them. And in a way I agree with them.”

Veterans make up about 6% of the U.S. adult population, but account for about 14% of all suicides, according to recent data from the Pew Research Center and Department of Veterans Affairs.

Wilson said that from 2017 to the present, he lost more SEAL teammates to suicide than during his entire 15 years of service.

For him, it was time to illuminate the darkness and help his brothers. Wilson returned to graduate school and attended Oxford in England in an MBA program where he developed his Invi Mind Health app.

Invi, what does invisible visible meanis an app that can be downloaded to any phone and connects to health apps on a person’s phone or wearable device (like a FitBit or Garmin watch).

“We took the biometric data from that, and we worked with leading physicians across the country to include Walter Reed, and we weighted that different biometric data and gave you the trend lines around your mental health,” Wilson explained. “So we are all going to experience ups and downs. It’s normal. What we really care about are those huge downward deviations. And then we notify you with personalized solutions.”

The app uses a machine learning algorithm that collects data to better adapt to the user’s mental health trends and identify the best solutions. These devices provide heart rate, sleep cycles, and more, so Wilson and his team recognized they could find correlations between something like depression and anxiety and heart rate variability.

Wilson acknowledged that his first presentation of the device to a group of Navy SEALS was met with skepticism about sharing personal data.

It said it took those criticisms seriously and implemented data protection twice as strict as required by the government and that users are not identified. He said there is also the option to get rid of the data if someone so wishes.

Invi also has a “Swim Buddy” feature, which is an idea taken directly from the Navy SEALS. Wilson said that during his service, wherever he went, his swimming partner went.

“We have the same concept built in there. “If his score drifts far enough, he alerts his teammate, his swim buddy, and sends him a text,” Wilson said. “They get a text, they read it, and then it says, ‘Just check on Johnny today, his score is down.’ And sometimes it’s nothing. And if anything, at least you can start the conversation about what’s going on. Let’s have a real conversation.”

The app fully launched last year, so Wilson said there’s still a lot more he wants to do with it. But for now, he’s confident they’ve already saved some lives.

Wilson, who now lives in Parker, Colorado, with his wife and five children, said he plans to expand his product to serve not only veterinarians, but also first responders, athletes, teenagers and anyone who needs it.

“It may look and feel like a military or first aid application right now,” he said. “But the reality is that we are going to try to serve as many people as possible as quickly as we can.”

Email senior reporter Brett Forrest at [email protected]. Continue @brettforrestTVin x and Brett Forrest News On Facebook.

Unaffiliated voters cast 46% of all votes in El Paso County

As of Wednesday evening, voter turnout among active voters in El Paso County was at 78% and is expected to increase as election workers continue to process votes.

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