For users of the Bearing mobile app
These Client Terms govern your use of the Bearing mobile application (the "App"). By creating an account or using the App, you agree to these Client Terms.
Bearing is an emotional check-in application that allows you to record your emotions, their intensity, related life domains, and optional notes. The App also includes goal-tracking features ("Quests"), optional gamification elements (streaks, experience points, and levels), and self-assessment instruments assigned by your practitioner.
If you connect your account to a licensed mental health practitioner ("your therapist") through an invitation link, your check-in data, quest activity, assessment responses, and custom tracking data may be shared with your therapist through a separate practitioner dashboard.
Bearing is not a therapy service, mental health treatment, clinical intervention, or medical device. Bearing does not provide counseling, diagnosis, treatment recommendations, or crisis intervention. The App is a personal tracking tool that may be used alongside — but never as a replacement for — professional mental health care.
Bearing cannot connect you with emergency services and is not monitored for crisis content. Instead:
Nothing in the App constitutes medical advice. Insights, patterns, trends, and summaries displayed in the App are generated by automated computations applied to your self-reported data. They are not clinical assessments.
The App may present standardized screening instruments (such as PHQ-9 or GAD-7) assigned by your therapist. These instruments are scored mechanically by the App based on your responses. Assessment scores are not diagnoses, clinical evaluations, or treatment recommendations. Your therapist is solely responsible for interpreting your assessment results in a clinical context. Assessment responses, including individual item responses, are shared with your connected therapist.
The App includes optional gamification features such as streaks, experience points, levels, and shields. These features are designed to support engagement with the check-in habit. They are not clinical tools, therapeutic interventions, or indicators of mental health progress. Participation in gamification features is optional and can be disabled at any time in App settings. You should never feel pressured to check in to maintain a streak or earn points. If gamification features cause you distress, disable them or discuss this with your therapist.
Bearing is not monitored in real time by your therapist, by Bearing staff, or by any other person. Check-in data, assessment responses, and quest activity you submit may not be reviewed by anyone immediately. Submitting data — including data reflecting distress or crisis — will not result in any immediate response.
If you are working with a therapist, your therapist is responsible for providing you with a crisis plan and emergency contacts. Bearing is not part of your crisis plan unless your therapist has explicitly included it and explained its limitations to you.
Connecting your account to a therapist is voluntary. If you connect to a therapist, you consent to sharing your check-in data (emotions, intensity, domains, and shared notes), quest activity, assessment responses, and custom tracking data with that therapist through their practitioner dashboard.
When you accept a therapist's invitation, you choose how much historical data to share:
You can also control whether your check-in notes are visible to your therapist. This setting can be changed at any time in App settings.
When connected, your therapist can see: check-in entries (subject to your history-sharing selection), notes you have marked as shared, your check-in frequency, responses to prompts and assessments, quest assignments and completion status, and custom tracking data.
Your therapist may send you the following through Bearing:
All prompts, quests, shared notes, and reactions are created by your therapist, not by Bearing. Bearing is the delivery mechanism; your therapist is responsible for their content and clinical appropriateness.
You may disconnect from a therapist at any time through the App settings. Disconnection takes effect immediately, and your therapist will no longer receive new data from your account.
Your therapist retains access to data submitted while the connection was active as part of their clinical record. This retained data is subject to the data retention policy described in Section 5.3.
You own your check-in data. You may delete your account and all associated data held by Bearing at any time through the App settings.
Your data is encrypted in transit and at rest. All data is stored on servers located in the United States using HIPAA-eligible infrastructure. We do not sell your data. We do not use your data for advertising.
When you disconnect from a therapist or delete your account, your therapist's copy of data submitted during the active connection is retained for up to six (6) years from the date of disconnection, as required by HIPAA record retention obligations (45 CFR § 164.530(j)). After this retention period, the data is permanently inaccessible through the practitioner dashboard. Deleting your Bearing account removes your access to the App and your personal data from Bearing's systems, but does not affect data already incorporated into your therapist's clinical record within the retention period.
Bearing may use de-identified, aggregated data that cannot reasonably be used to identify you for product improvement and research, in compliance with HIPAA de-identification standards (45 CFR § 164.514).
You must be at least 13 years old to use the App. If you are under 18, your use must be in connection with a licensed mental health practitioner who has obtained any required parental or guardian consent.
You agree not to: (a) use the App for any unlawful purpose; (b) submit false or misleading data with intent to deceive your therapist; (c) attempt to access another user's account or data; (d) reverse engineer or decompile the App.
The App is provided "as is" and "as available." Bearing disclaims all warranties, express or implied. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Bearing shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, including damages arising from: your reliance on any data, insight, or assessment score in the App; any delay in delivering data to your therapist; any clinical decision made by your therapist based on App data; any crisis, self-harm, or emergency event; or any distress related to gamification features, streaks, or engagement mechanics.
You may delete your account at any time through the App settings. Bearing may suspend or terminate your account for violation of these Client Terms.
These Client Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to conflict of laws principles.
Bearing may update these Client Terms from time to time. We will notify you of material changes through the App. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.
For licensed mental health practitioners using the Bearing dashboard
These Practitioner Terms govern your use of the Bearing practitioner dashboard and related services. By creating a practitioner account, you agree to these Practitioner Terms.
Bearing provides a software platform that enables licensed mental health practitioners to view emotional check-in data submitted by their clients through the Bearing mobile application. The service includes:
Bearing does not provide clinical advice, diagnoses, treatment recommendations, or therapeutic interventions. All client data presented is self-reported and has not been validated, verified, or interpreted by Bearing.
You are solely responsible for all clinical decisions, treatment planning, and therapeutic interventions. Bearing's data summaries, pattern detection, trend indicators, clinical indicator features, and assessment scoring are informational aids only and do not constitute clinical assessments.
Bearing scores standardized instruments (such as PHQ-9 and GAD-7) mechanically based on client responses. Scores and severity labels are computed automatically and are not clinical interpretations. You are solely responsible for interpreting assessment results, including individual item responses, in a clinical context. Bearing may surface specific item-level responses (such as suicidal ideation items) as visual indicators in the dashboard. These indicators are documentation aids, not risk assessments.
Bearing provides infrastructure for you to assign quests, define custom tracking dimensions, and apply focus programs. The clinical appropriateness, therapeutic rationale, and content of quests, vitals, and focus programs you create or assign are solely your responsibility. Bearing is the delivery and tracking mechanism; it does not evaluate or endorse the clinical value of any configuration you create.
The service does not replace any component of your standard of care, including clinical assessment, treatment planning, crisis intervention protocols, mandatory reporting obligations, or documentation requirements.
Bearing does not provide real-time monitoring, crisis detection, or emergency alerting. The service is not designed, intended, or suitable for continuous monitoring of client safety, suicidal ideation, self-harm risk, or any form of clinical crisis.
Your use of Bearing does not create, expand, or modify any duty to monitor client activity between sessions. Check-in data submitted by clients may not be reviewed by you in real time. Clinical indicators are intended for session preparation review, not real-time monitoring.
Pattern-based features in the dashboard (including intensity patterns, negative streaks, domain concentration signals, and engagement changes) are based on simple rule-based computations applied to self-reported data. They are not clinically validated screening instruments and do not constitute crisis detection, risk assessment, or safety monitoring. The presence or absence of a clinical indicator does not indicate the presence or absence of clinical risk.
Bearing may visually flag individual assessment item responses related to suicidal ideation (such as PHQ-9 item 9). These flags indicate that the client recorded a non-zero response to that item. They are documentation prompts — not risk assessments, crisis alerts, or clinical recommendations. Clinical follow-up is solely your responsibility.
You are solely responsible for establishing, communicating, and maintaining appropriate crisis intervention protocols with your clients. Bearing does not facilitate or replace your crisis protocol.
The therapeutic relationship exists exclusively between you and your client. Bearing is not a party to or facilitator of the therapeutic relationship.
You are responsible for obtaining all necessary informed consent from your clients before connecting them to your practitioner account, including: consent to share emotional check-in data, quest activity, assessment responses, and custom tracking data with you; explanation of what data you will be able to see; explanation that Bearing is not a crisis service or monitoring tool; and explanation that you may send prompts, quests, shared notes, and reactions that will be visible to the client through the App.
You may write shared session notes and send reactions (such as heart acknowledgments) that are visible to your client through the App. You are solely responsible for the content and clinical appropriateness of all communications you send to clients through Bearing.
If you use Bearing with clients under 18, you are solely responsible for obtaining any parental or guardian consent required by applicable state law and for ensuring that use of Bearing — including gamification features, quests, and assessment instruments — is clinically appropriate for the client.
Use of the Practitioner Service to view, store, or process Protected Health Information (PHI) as defined under HIPAA requires execution of a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) between you and Bearing. The BAA is incorporated by reference into these Practitioner Terms.
You are solely responsible for: obtaining appropriate authorization from clients for the use and disclosure of PHI through Bearing; maintaining your own HIPAA compliance program; and complying with all applicable federal, state, and local privacy laws.
Bearing implements administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to protect PHI in accordance with the HIPAA Security Rule. All data is encrypted in transit and at rest on HIPAA-eligible AWS services within the United States. All practitioner access to client PHI is logged for audit purposes.
You represent and warrant that you are a licensed mental health practitioner in good standing in your jurisdiction of practice. Bearing does not verify your licensure status. You agree to notify Bearing immediately if your license is suspended, revoked, or subject to disciplinary action.
Client check-in data is owned by the client. You are granted access solely for the purpose of providing clinical care within the context of an active therapeutic relationship and subject to the client's ongoing consent.
Annotations, session notes, prompts, quests, custom tracking dimensions, focus programs, chapters, and other content you create are your clinical work product. Bearing stores this data on your behalf and does not claim ownership of it.
Client data associated with your practitioner account is retained for up to six (6) years from the date the therapist-client connection is terminated, in accordance with HIPAA record retention requirements (45 CFR § 164.530(j)). After this period, client data is permanently inaccessible through the practitioner dashboard.
Bearing may use de-identified, aggregated data for product improvement, research, and analytics, in compliance with HIPAA de-identification standards (45 CFR § 164.514).
The Practitioner Service is provided "as is" and "as available." Bearing disclaims all warranties, express or implied. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Bearing shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, including damages arising from: clinical decisions made based on data presented through the service; failure to review client data, clinical indicators, or assessment results in a timely manner; client crisis events, self-harm, or suicide; the presence or absence of clinical indicators or assessment item flags; or unauthorized access to client data caused by your failure to maintain account security.
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Bearing from any claims arising from: your use of the service; your clinical decisions or treatment of clients; the content of quests, prompts, shared notes, or focus programs you create or assign; your violation of these Practitioner Terms; or any claim by a client or third party related to your use of Bearing in your clinical practice.
You agree not to: use the service for any purpose other than providing clinical care to your clients; access data of any client with whom you do not have an active therapeutic relationship; share your account credentials; or use the service in any manner that violates applicable law or professional ethical standards.
You may terminate your account at any time. Upon termination, you may request export of your clinical work product (annotations, session notes, and practitioner-created content). Client check-in data is not exported to you — it remains with the client. Your clinical work product is retained for 90 days to allow export, then permanently deleted unless otherwise required by law.
These Practitioner Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to conflict of laws principles.
Bearing may update these Practitioner Terms from time to time. We will notify you of material changes via email at least 30 days before the changes take effect.