HOPE NEWSLETTER
How We Spread Hope / 1-Year Anniversary
Our Mental Health Awareness Week: How We Spread Hope
We spent Mental Health Awareness Week reflecting on how we could share even more hope to inspire recovery. It’s a goal in everything we do. We highlight some of our ongoing hope-based initiatives below. We are pleased with our progress to date, but leave it to you to decide.
Our Psych Ward Greeting Cards Program
They weren’t with us this Mental Health Awareness Week. They are alone with their own thoughts and reflections — relapses, struggles, disappointments, and hopelessness. A mental health crisis has landed them in this taboo place, perhaps for a repeat visit — the psych ward. It is an awfully lonely place. There are rarely get well wishes or flowers for the window ledges. Often, patients have no visitors at all. I know what it feels like. I’ve been there three times. They were the lows of my struggle with mental illness. I felt locked inside both emotionally and physically. ForLikeMinds is bringing the outside inside, to show these patients that they are not alone, that those of us on the outside care.
Our approach is simple, but powerful. For the past three months, I’ve personally delivered greeting cards with words of encouragement to patients in psych wards in New York City. We’ve received well over 1,500 wonderful donated greeting cards, and distributed well over 150 cards over five hospital visits. We want to share a message of hope with these patients. Patients are even writing and sharing messages of hope with each other. We want to tell and show them that recovery is possible. I also share my mental illness recovery experience with them. A few brief comments can make a difference. Stigma examples are plentiful and widely publicized, but too few recovery examples are shared. Importantly, when people on the outside reach out to those struggling on the inside, it reduces the feeling of stigma. It says that they are in the hospital like other patients dealing with a health crisis. They have not been banished from society. They too will return and get back to life.
The patient reactions have been very moving. To feel cared about and supported can provide a huge boost when people are at their lows. And, in turn, they are sharing their examples of fortitude and resilience with us, the ForLikeMinds community and others. I have been deeply touched by this program. These patients give me hope, inspire me. This also helps sustain our recovery mission for our members. The reaction of our card recipients reinforces the hope that is within us. Please join us. Please share a little hope with those who need it most.
We extend a heartfelt thanks to everyone who has made this initiative possible — Our Patients and Hospital Staff: Patient Community and Kristin and MaryAnne of Lenox Hill Hospital Psychiatric Unit of NY; Patient Community and Chaya and Dawn of Payne Whitney Clinic, New York-Presbyterian of NY; our Supporter: New York Alliance on Mental Illness-New York City; and our Card Donors from across the U.S.: Amy of AZ, Chanda of OR, Chana of NY, Cybill of NE, Emily of MA, Eriq of CA, Idlewild of FL, Isa of DC, Jacque of IL, Linda of CT, Miriam of NY, Monica of NJ, Quotable of NY, and Verizon Media of NY.
Our Words of Hope
Our ForLikeMinds Community
ForLikeMinds is a free online community for people living with or supporting someone with mental illness. We allow people to connect anonymously one-on-one and in groups.
We recently added the ability for group leaders to enable password protected access when creating a group for their target members. This may be particularly useful for organizations interested in facilitating communication for existing and potential new members. All members continue to have easy access to general groups and individual connections.
ForLikeMinds’ 1-year Anniversary
We launched ForLikeMinds one year ago this month, and we’re proud of our achievements. We have grown to a community approaching 10,000 members. It is diverse and represents the complexities of mental illness, including over 100 mental health conditions, over 40 substance use conditions, and over 150 stressful life events.
- We produced and launched 3 highly informative and very well received videos that have been collectively viewed over 275,000 times on Facebook.
- Our top 10 Sponsored Facebook Posts have reached over 500,000 people with over 2,500,000 impressions.
- We launched our mental health non-profit initiative Psych Ward Greeting Cards.
- We launched our Mental Illness Greeting Cards line.
- We continue to enhance our user experience, including the addition of password-protected groups.
- We authored 25 blog posts, including 12 NAMI National Blog Posts that have been viewed over 100,000 times.
- We developed a Facebook following of over 10,000 Facebook followers with engagement rates far exceeding those of many leading mental health non-profits.
- We’ve been active in mental health advocacy through our work with NAMI-NYC.
I’ve done all of this day-to-day alone with the tremendous support of my amazing spouse, Izzy. I have done so, despite the fact that I am living with and actively managing severe bipolar I disorder. Yet, I am thankful to my mental illness for having given me the empathy and compassion and insight to help many others like me. This work has indeed added profound meaning to my life. Each week several people reach out to me to let me know that I’ve given them hope. I am moved and touched. Not so long ago, when I too was in the psych ward, before I reached recovery, a time when I was living without hope, I never imagined that I might ever be able to inspire others.
The Power of Hope
All that we do is premised on the power of hope for those affected by mental illness. If you are not convinced of the power of hope, you might change your mind if you met someone with mental illness living in recovery. You might find research evidence of hope’s effectiveness helpful. Professor Larry Davidson of Yale School of Medicine collaborated with ForLikeMinds to identify this evidence, which he summarizes as follows:
“Research suggests that hope is crucial to recovery for persons with mental illness. A scoping review of research on the experience of hope among people with co-occurring mental health and substance use problems found that hope was perceived as a facilitator of change and recovery, making change and getting better seem possible.”
Our Mental Illness Greeting Cards
Inspired by the huge success of our Sponsored Facebook Posts, we’ve designed a line of greeting cards. These cards help people connect with their loved ones living with mental illness when they have difficulty finding the words or knowing what to do. We donate some of our cards to our Psych Ward Greeting Cards program and a portion of sales proceeds to NAMI-NYC.
Blog Writing
I am a monthly contributor to the NAMI National Blog. Since October, 2018, I have contributed 12 highly praised blog posts. I have also contributed an additional 13 blog posts to bpHope, the Fountain House Blog, Psychology Today, the Stability Network Blog, Thrive on Campus, and the Steve Fund Blog. I also contributed a personal account to the highly prestigious peer reviewed medical journal, Schizophrenia Bulletin. I also recorded Giving Voice to Depression’s top performing podcast episode.
Facebook
We’re sharing hope with a highly engaged following. For hope, inspiration, and education we encourage you to follow us.
A heartfelt thanks to all of our supporters,
especially the members of our
ForLikeMinds Community
Thank you for giving me hope,
Katherine
We Are LikeMinds
