🌱🐰💰 Improving Mental Wellbeing

The Good, the Bunny and the Money is our monthly take on the latest impactful success stories from across the U.S. and around the World.‌
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‌'🌱 The Good' looks at nonprofits leading the way in impactful change;

'💰 The Money' takes a dive into the private-sector champions driving financial inclusion & economic development; and

'🐰 The Bunny' showcases the most promising collaborations between nonprofits and businesses working hand in hand for the People and the Planet.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted many people’s mental health and has created new barriers for people already suffering from mental illness. During the pandemic, around 4 in 10 adults in the United States have reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, up from 1 in 10 adults prior to the pandemic beginning. So today we’re looking at champions across non-profits, the private sector and collaborations that are raising awareness, reducing stigma, and implementing programs that create healthier societies for those who struggle with Mental Illness.

🌱 The Good: TransLifeline, radical community care run by and for trans people

The problem: People who identify as transgender have higher rates of mental health complications than those of the general population.

Trans Lifeline… is the first transgender crisis hotline to exist in the US, offering peer-to-peer phone support and microgrants to Trans people.

How does phone support and microgrants support the Trans community?

• Phone support: Offers a hotline that doesn’t engage in non-consensual active rescue - meaning the operators never call 911 on callers without a request and consent. This is due to a connection between involuntary hospitalisation and suicide attempts after discharge.
• Microgrants: Address socio-economic injustice - a component of the trans narrative that is often missing - by giving small grants to trans people who are in need of financial support.

Trans Lifeline is also a bunny.money partner!

🐰 The Bunny pt 1: ASICS announces donation partnership with The National Alliance on Mental Illness.

ASICS have partnered with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) - America’s largest grassroots mental health organizations. The partnership allows ASICS and its US customers to donate funds to support mental health awareness and resources.

How it works: The initiative will provide customers with the option to make a donation with every purchase, and ASICS will match each individual donation up to $500,000 total.

Building on the past: This isn’t the first time that ASICS and NAMI have collaborated to support mental health awareness and funding. ASICS Elite Athlete, Johnny Gregorek, also championed a fundraising effort for NAMI NYC featuring participants running a mile wearing blue jeans.

Partnerships between sports and mental health charities are extremely important, especially for professional athletes. Bunny.money partners, Extra-Ordinaire, are on a mission to empower athletes to champion life after competitive sports.

🐰 The Bunny pt 2: Documentary on blockchain to raise awareness around anxiety

The situ: There’s a growing mental health crisis among young people. One in five children suffer from mental illness in the US, yet less than 2% of philanthropic funding goes towards mental health targeted to kids and teens.

A novel solution: Media company, Liquid Media Group, has partnered with streaming service, iNDIEFLIX, to create a new documentary called ANGST, with the first-ever screenings hosted exclusively on the blockchain.

The benefits: The documentary is designed to raise awareness and open up the conversation around anxiety. The streaming event will also benefit mental health charity organizations, with 50% of proceeds benefiting Jack.org and Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation.

Leveraging the Blockchain: Viewers set up their secure digital wallet, which serves as a vault, and enables users to donate via credit cards in cryptocurrencies, claim free community NFTs, and purchase the excluse ANGST NFT.

💰 The Money: AI based mental-health app raises $11m in investment to scale innovative solution

Mental health doctors are often in the dark about what is happening to their patients day-to-day, in between visits. Startup, HealthRythms, has created a smartphone app that tracks the mental health and predicts depresseive relapses. Using smartphone sensors to passively measure behaviours relevant to mental health. The user’s daily activities (such as sleep, physical exercise, movement and social engagement) are translated into insight on patient health and wellbeing. This information is used to deliver personalised, timely interventions, through a digital experience woven into daily life.

Next steps: HealthRythms has announced an $11million investment, which it will use to scale its solution, so that it can support even more patients across the US, and improve technolgies ability to solve the universal problem of patient monitoring.

🥕 What else we’re munching:

• Morgan Stanley Alliance for Children's Mental Health announces five winners of the inaugural Mental Health Innovation Awards
• Black Girls Smile provides virtual and in-person mental health literacy education to help Black girls and women lead mentally healthy lives.
• Teen Line provides teenagers across the country with an anonymous, non-judgmental space to talk about their problems with highly trained teens as the call handlers.
• A McKinsey study finds that many employees with a behavioral-health condition would avoid treatment because they didn’t want people finding out.The ‘A Community Thrives awards’ has allocated grants to worthy causes and organizations across the United States aiming to improve their communities.

Image Credits: Cover Photo by Total Shape via Unsplash; Healthrhythms; MentalHealthInnovation; Good therapy

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