Moldova’s mental health changemaker
Psychologist Ana Niculăeș wanted to make a change in her home country of Moldova, removing the stigma surrounding mental health. She has done so, and much more besides.
The Covid-19 pandemic not only reshaped daily life but also amplified conversations around mental health on a global scale.
As millions faced prolonged isolation, job insecurity, and the grief of losing loved ones, mental health concerns surged to the forefront of public discourse.
Anxiety, depression, and burnout became shared experiences, forcing societies to confront long-standing stigmas surrounding mental well-being.
This unprecedented focus on mental health revealed critical gaps in traditional support systems and underscored the urgent need for accessible, innovative solutions.
Enter online counselling. As lockdowns confined people to their homes, digital platforms emerged as a lifeline for those seeking mental health support.
What was once seen as a niche or impersonal service suddenly became an essential tool, embraced by both providers and patients.
For Ana Niculăeș, a psychologist and psychotherapist from Chișinău, the capital of Moldova, this shift towards online counselling was an opportunity. Her start-up, Respiro, connects therapists with those seeking support, offering mental health professionals a one-stop-shop that takes care of appointments, billing, and – importantly – a platform that respects patient confidentiality.
“With the pandemic, we realised that we needed an online platform that would ensure confidentiality,” she says. “You will remember that there were some issues with Zoom and other platforms in regards to recordings, so at a start-up weekend I came up with the idea of Respiro.”
Making a change
Ana says that she decided she wanted to be a psychologist in high school, and after graduating from university in Moldova with a degree in psychology and English, she benefitted from the Erasmus programme to study for a masters at three universities in Europe: Paris, Barcelona and Coimbra.
After completing her masters, Ana says that she was keen to return to Moldova and was able to do so thanks to a Soros fellowship which encouraged students who had studied abroad to come back to Moldova and to lecture in the country’s universities.
“I wanted to make a change in my country,” she says.
Unfortunately, Ana also notes that at the time, there was a great deal of pressure in the country’s universities to offer good marks in exchange for money, something she refused to do.
So abroad she went again, this time to research for a PhD at the University of Buffalo in New York, on a Carnegie Fellowship, where she also taught human behaviour theories and social entrepreneurship.
But again, she felt a pull to come home.
“So, in 2014, I decided to return and set up my own practice,” Ana says. “To have my own private practice was my dream ever since I was studying psychology as an undergraduate.”
With no background in business, Ana took a business course. “It was really interesting to learn about the importance of marketing and all the things that we unfortunately do not learn as psychologists, but which are very important.”
Ana says that platforms such as Respiro have been important for members of Moldova’s diaspora – around one million Moldovans live outside the country.
“It’s important for them to have a therapist who speaks their language and shares the same cultural background,” she says.
If there’s a ‘why’, you’ll find the ‘how’
Respiro is not Ana’s first idea for a start-up. Previously, she came up with the idea of creating a chatbot that would help people identify their level of quality of sleep, their energy and self-esteem. Based on the results, it would then recommend them to a specialist.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to validate the idea,” Ana shares. “So we pivoted to another idea, to create a chatbot to support people going through a breakup. My team and I travelled to a start-up event in Amsterdam but again we couldn’t validate it, as the cost of client acquisition and retention was higher than any fee we would receive”
Ana didn’t give up, however. “My first objective in life is to be in a physical and emotional balance and feel well. And the second is to promote the mental health in Moldova. So having this as a ‘why’, you always find the ‘how’.”
And so the Respiro platform was born, in 2019. “Mentors and investors were telling us that now is not the time. And then came the pandemic, which changed everything.”
Commitment and success
Besides running Respiro, Ana’s commitment to promoting mental health in Moldova goes much further.
Since 2020 she has been part of a group looking to regulate psychotherapy and psychology in Moldova.
“We had this objective to make a law that would regulate the profession in order to protect it and protect the public as well, because there are a lot of imposters who pretend to offer psychotherapy, but who only make people’s mental health worse,” she says.
