Dr. Tom Insel, former Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, describes his journey from government service to Silicon Valley in search of technologies to help people with mental illness. Thomas R. lnsel, M.D., a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, is a co-founder and President of Mindstrong Health. His career in mental health has been long and non-linear. After training in psychiatry at UCSF in 1979, Insel did clinical research at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, MD where he established the value of serotonergic antidepressants for OCD. In 1983, he shifted from clinical research to study the molecular and cellular basis of complex social behaviors, helping to create a new field of social neuroscience. First at NIMH and later at Emory University, he demonstrated the role of oxytocin and vasopressin in maternal and affiliative behaviors in non-human animals. In 2000, he founded an NSF Center for Behavioral Neuroscience across 8 colleges and universities in Atlanta, GA. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx