Why this would work
Connection is not a feeling. It is a health factor, and it has been measured.
Every number on this page has a named source, and the link goes to the paper. Where there is no evidence, it says so.
The problem, measured
The landmark review is Holt-Lunstad, Smith and Layton, published in PLoS Medicine in 2010. It pooled 148 studies covering 308,849 people, followed for 7.5 years on average.
The finding: people with strong social ties show a 50% greater likelihood of surviving the follow-up period. The effect held across age, sex, initial health status and cause of death. That is comparable in size to quitting smoking, and larger than physical activity.
In May 2025 the World Health Assembly passed the WHO’s first ever resolution on social connection. The Commission report, from June 2025, points to 1 in 6 people worldwide affected by loneliness, and over 871,000 deaths a year associated with it.
What research says works
The Harvard Study of Adult Development has followed the same people since 1938. The conclusion Robert Waldinger sums up is blunt: relationship quality at 50 predicted health at 80 better than cholesterol did.
John Gottman filmed couples in conversation and showed that what separates those who stay from those who split is observable behaviour, not personality: contempt, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling. These show up in daily life, and can be noticed early.
Both findings point the same way: what changes a relationship is not one big conversation a year. It is what happens on ordinary days, and continuity matters more than intensity.
How Confidey was built from this
A starting point, and then another
Five areas, from your point of view, answered in two minutes. Not a test and not a diagnosis: it is a measure of where you are today, so that in six weeks there is something to compare against. Progress with no starting measure is activity by another name.
Exercises drawn from known tools
From the goal you choose come exercises built out of instruments that exist outside this product and have names: the GROW model, the scaling question from solution-focused brief therapy, implementation intentions, Nonviolent Communication, force-field analysis, values clarification. None of them was invented here.
No exercise repeats
An exercise that comes back stops being an exercise and becomes a form. Each one arrives once, and the order follows what practice shows: look before acting, act before talking, talk before sustaining. Asking for a hard conversation in week one is asking someone to fail.
Alone, or with the people who matter
An exercise can be done with up to five people close to you. Each person answers the same questions in their own time, and nobody sees anyone else’s answer until everyone is done. Reading first changes what you write, and then the two readings stop being independent, which was the whole point.
None of it is public
Stigma is one of the four barriers the WHO itself names for mental health care, alongside shortage of professionals, distance and cost. Here nothing is published, notifications never reveal the subject, and you can see and delete what Confidey has kept about you, whenever you want.
And on the professional’s side
Between-session homework is one of the few things in this field with a meta-analysis behind it. Kazantzis, Whittington and Dattilio pooled 46 studies in 2010 and found an effect of d = 0.48 favouring homework, comparing the SAME therapy with and without it. That is not the difference between therapies: it is the difference homework makes inside one.
And it is not just that homework exists: how much and how well it gets done relates to outcome. Kazantzis and colleagues, in 2016, found g = 0.79 for quantity completed at post-treatment, across 15 studies with 1,537 people. Which means compliance is not an administrative detail. It is part of the treatment.
That is exactly the part that stays invisible. Days pass between one session and the next, and the professional only finds out what happened by asking at the start of the following one, on that session’s time. Confidey for professionals gives the assignment a place to live in that gap, and gives back what got done and where the person got stuck. With their explicit consent, item by item, and never sharing conversation content.
What this literature does NOT say: that Confidey improves clinical outcomes. It shows that between-session homework matters and that compliance relates to outcome. No study has measured this product, and we are not going to write that one has.
See Confidey for professionalsWhat we do not claim
The literature on this page supports that social connection matters and that certain behaviours predict outcomes. It does not support the claim that this product improves those outcomes. Turning evidence about the problem into evidence about the solution is the most common error in this category, and we are not going to make it.
Confidey does not replace therapy and does not diagnose anything. The Trust Score and the starting point are our own instruments, for you to track your own perception over time, and not validated clinical scales. The loneliness figures on this page describe the size of the problem in the world, not our results.
Sources
- Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Layton JB (2010). Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review. PLoS Medicine 7(7): e1000316.
- World Health Organization (2025). From loneliness to social connection: charting a path to healthier societies. Report of the WHO Commission on Social Connection.
- World Health Organization (2025). Social connection linked to improved health and reduced risk of early death.
- World Health Organization (2025). Over a billion people living with mental health conditions: services require urgent scale-up.
- World Health Organization (2024). Mental Health Atlas 2024.
- Harvard Study of Adult Development (1938 - present).
- Waldinger R. What Harvard’s Study of Adult Development Reveals about Happiness.
- Gottman JM, Levenson RW (1992) and subsequent work. The Gottman Institute research FAQ.
- Whitmore J. Coaching for Performance (GROW model).
- de Shazer S, Berg IK. Solution-focused brief therapy.
- Gollwitzer PM (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist 54(7).
- Rosenberg MB. Nonviolent Communication.
- Kazantzis N, Whittington C, Dattilio F (2010). Meta-Analysis of Homework Effects in Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy: A Replication and Extension. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 17(2): 144-156.
- Kazantzis N, Whittington C, Zelencich L, Kyrios M, Norton PJ, Hofmann SG (2016). Quantity and Quality of Homework Compliance: A Meta-Analysis of Relations With Outcome in Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Behavior Therapy 47(5): 755-772.
No card. Cancel anytime.