We are measuring whether Lira for Women actually works. Here is how.

There is a question every app that touches mental health should be able to answer: does it actually help?

Most apps in this space can tell you how many people downloaded them and how long their streaks are. As a psychologist, I always wanted to know something different: whether the lives of the women using them actually get better.

Lira for Women is a small app with a specific mission: helping neurodivergent women understand and manage their energy. This month we started measuring its impact with the same seriousness we would demand from any clinical tool, and committing, publicly and in advance, to sharing the results whatever they turn out to be.

What we are measuring

When a woman joins the app, she is invited to take part in our impact study. If she accepts, she answers a short set of questions at three moments: when she starts, after 4 weeks, and after 8 weeks.

We chose validated instruments rather than inventing our own metrics. Wellbeing is measured with the WHO-5 Wellbeing Index. The name can sound soft, but the WHO-5 is one of the most researched screening instruments in mental health, used in clinical practice across dozens of countries. Self-compassion is measured with the Self-Compassion Scale Short Form, and it is here for a reason: chronic self-criticism is one of the deepest marks left on women who were recognised late or not at all. Alongside these, we track the outcomes the app exists to change: whether women can name what drains and restores their energy, whether they stop treating themselves as the problem, and whether they have more energy for the things that matter to them.

The rules we set before seeing any data

Good measurement is mostly about what you decide before the results arrive. So we pre-registered our rules.

We defined in advance what counts as meaningful improvement on every scale, so we cannot move the goalposts later. We never report groups smaller than twenty people, so no result can be traced to an individual and no small sample can be dressed up as evidence. And we are honest about what this design can and cannot show. This is a pre-post study, without a control group. It can show whether the women who use the app get better over time and by how much. It cannot prove that the app alone caused it. We will always report it that way.

Participation is voluntary and separate from using the app. Everything is opt-in with explicit consent, answers are analysed only in aggregate, and every participant can leave the study at any time from the app settings. Declining changes nothing about how the app works for you.

Why we are doing this

Neurodivergent women have spent decades being misunderstood by research that was not designed around them and by services that recognised them late or not at all. Many arrive at the app after years of being told to try harder. We think the least an app serving this community owes them is rigour: real instruments, honest rules, and the humility to be proven wrong.

This work is supported by the Ímpares programme, a partnership between Fundação Ageas and CUF that funds projects measuring real social impact, and it is led clinically from start to finish.

In a few months, we will publish what we found. If the app enables real transformation, we will show how much, with the methodology attached. If it falls short of what we hope, we will say so and use it to build a better product. Either way, you will read it here.