Masawa Minute 47
Mental Health for All! | The secret to effective storytelling | + More!
This is the Masawa Minute — mental wellness, social impact, and impact investing snippets from what we’ve read the last two weeks + where you can get active.
Just a few days ago, the annual World Mental Health Day took place, once again reminding us of the importance of openness, vulnerability, and speaking out about our mental wellbeing. This year’s theme was “mental health in an unequal world”, which consequently became the theme of this week’s newsletter. Enjoy the content and remember — every day is mental health day!
Masawa Thoughts
Yes, every day is mental health day. Yes, everywhere is a mental health place.
Over the past weeks, we’ve been having an increased number of external conversations around the importance of focusing on the human factor when assessing and nurturing investments and innovations. It’s clear that the human factor, broken down into the internal human factor (humans flourishing inside the organization) and external human factor (human flourishing outside the organization), is currently not a common focus area by most, but it’s sorely needed. Yes, we smell opportunities for more impact and partnerships to help shape a more equal world via mental health. Remember, Masawa is a derivative of the Arabic word for equality al-musaawaah (المساواة)!
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Rebalancing Racial Injustice: A glance at racial injustice from different lenses
Join the panel discussion on the intersection of race, with a specific focus on internalized, personally mediated, and institutional racism. On the agenda are topics of racial equality, mental health, and public health covered by a team of experts, followed by a discussion and a Q&A with the audience. The discussion will take place tomorrow, 14th of October, at 6–7:30 pm CEST — take your (free) spot now!
What we’re reading…
📓 It’s time to put mental health on every climate agenda
Last year, besides a year of the pandemic, was the warmest year on record, seeing horrible wildfires all around the world. This year we’re seeing deadly floods in Europe and Southeast Asia, as well as earthquakes in Central Africa. As numerous scientists have warned us this year, the threats of climate change cannot be ignored any longer. And that includes its impact on mental health outcomes. Mental health disorders are among the leading drivers of the global burden of diseases worldwide. Mental wellness, emotional resilience, and psychosocial wellbeing, which all fall under “mental health”, are strongly impacted by climate change, especially among vulnerable communities in disaster-prone environments. Natural disasters and extreme weather occurrences have long-lasting effects on mental health outcomes as they lead to post-traumatic stress disorders, anxiety, depression, and self-harm. Mental health is also negatively affected by rising temperature and pollution rates.
The gravity of these issues has led mental health to finally make its way into the center of discussions around global health. The World Health Organization’s Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan 2013–2020 signals the first formal recognition of mental health issues globally, similarly to what the 2016 Paris Agreement means for tackling climate change. Unfortunately, the progress on both mental health and climate emergency response remains slow, which is a cause for concern. Most research still treats extreme weather events and climate change as isolated cases, and, given that acting on climate change calls for a trade-off between long-term and short-term benefits which the governments aren’t willing to make, progress in climate change-related policy keeps stagnating. The lack of resources for better-informed decision-making and the slow progress towards a clearer connection between mental health and climate change delays the transformation from reactive emergency response to proactive preventative measures.
We must integrate mental health outcomes in national climate agendas to see meaningful progress on both challenges, which requires a systems-thinking approach involving inter-disciplinary insights and an ability to identify far-reaching policy solutions. The change is already happening in some countries, such as the US and Japan. They have incorporated elements of mental health care in their emergency responses, like deploying short-term psychiatric support, nutrition advisories, and setting up help centers in disaster sites. Nevertheless, a higher commitment going beyond national borders is required to provide meaningful support for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), which are the ones affected the worst. Deeper climate change and mental health research intersectionality will help policymakers to better understand what decisions are needed to implement an effective systems-based approach. The effect of climate change on mental health will be present for years to come, so it is crucial that we start integrating mental health into climate agendas, advocating for equitable allocation of resources, and supporting climate change and mental health research today. Every stakeholder must become involved to ensure we have a chance to see an equitable and sustainable future.
Climate-vulnerable populations are suffering a mental health crisis
👯♂️ How can mental health care reach more people?
Despite us feeling completely done with this pandemic, it doesn’t seem to be coming to an end just yet. As a consequence, we still face similar problems to those we were already dealing with a year ago — the only difference is that the systems and structures we rely on are even more exhausted. One of those problems is global mental illness, which is a leading cause of disability worldwide and affects 1 in 5 people worldwide. And while the challenge of increasing mental ill-health prevails, so do the barriers preventing access to care, such as stigma, distrust of institutions, and struggle to keep up with demand. Luckily, both the public and private sectors have expressed a willingness to facilitate positive change. Through innovative programs combining the latest science, digital delivery, and cross-sectoral collaboration, it’s possible to make mental healthcare more accessible for all communities.
One approach that has seen a tremendous rise in popularity over the last couple of years is, of course, digital healthcare. Online services are able to reach remote communities as well as decrease the fear of the stigma surrounding the decision to get help. It’s an effective way to improve the accessibility of health and social services. However, there’s one fundamental issue this approach doesn’t address — the lack of professionals available to provide quality support. The scarcity of providers prevents even app-based solutions to reach everyone in need. Another way to improve access to care is to utilize the power of peer and community support. Many people living with mental illnesses choose to help others going through the same thing by forming trusted peer networks that make them feel less alone in their struggles and can provide advice. Improving training and support for community health workers is also helpful, as they are crucial in extending basic care, including prevention and rehabilitation, to people who need it.
Public and private sectors around the world have developed programs combining both of these approaches. The services, such as Togetherall, ReachOut, or 7 Cups, are digital and often co-designed and advised by community peers, have become go-to resources for young people, their families, and others looking for support. There are also public-private partnerships, like Strong 365’s NYWell, that is meant to help young people on the brink of developing a mental illness. They offer numerous solutions, from resources for self-education to professional care. Moving forward and overcoming the barriers to care in the future will require cross-sectoral collaborations, involving people with mental illness, community workers, professionals, public and private sector leaders, and more. Fortunately, the inventive solutions offered today show a lot of promise that eventually we will be able to provide quality care for people wherever they are.
Inventive Ways of Delivering Mental Health Care Thrive during the Pandemic
🎤 Intersectionality lies at the core of successful storytelling
Storytelling is an essential component of any successful project — after all, it’s the best tool at our disposal for communicating our values, beliefs and making sense of the world around us. It’s also vital when discussing big, systemic issues, like racism, classism, or transphobia. We all think in stories and when we don’t have a narrative to teach us how to think about an issue, we fill in the gaps ourselves, which can result in flawed outlooks based on biases and assumptions. Therefore people who are communicating for social change need to learn how to tell diverse and inclusive stories through a lens of intersectionality in a way that helps people understand how communities experience systemic inequality every day. Luckily, there are some guiding principles that can help.
It’s particularly important to apply the “show, don’t tell” rule here. It can help illustrate abstract concepts like racism, ableism, sexism, justice, equality and convey what they look and feel like through the character’s experiences. We also can’t understand movements or issues without understanding the context first — otherwise, we’re tempted to turn to our assumptions again. It’s important to uncover the historical roots of the issues discussed and demonstrate how they persist in our systems today. Furthermore, the stories must give representation and control of the narrative to the people they talk about. Failing to include the voices of the communities whose stories we’re trying to tell, and not giving them a say in how and when their stories are used, leads to tokenizing or retraumatizing people by asking them to recall difficult experiences. When asking someone to share their story, we have to allow them to share their whole self — with the freedom to express how they define themselves outside of the frame in which they’re typically seen. Giving the communities freedom to tell their own stories also helps to convey the full humanity of people and prevents us from creating limiting and harmful narratives.
Intersectional stories aren’t just about educating people on an existing issue — they’re also about hope. According to scholars Alex Khasnabish and Max Haiven, movements must work from a place of radical imagination — imagining the world, life, and institutions as they could be and recognizing that the world can be changed. We have to incorporate those future possibilities into our work in the present, and allow them to inspire action and change today. Therefore it is through intersectional stories that we don’t only learn how a problem affects people today, but we can also see a world built on equity and justice and learn the ways to get there. Telling those stories is a responsible mission — advocacy organizations and storytellers need to be intentional with the stories they share, because of the great power they hold. Only by telling whole stories that include systems and historical perspectives and pass on the power to the communities they’re meant to serve, we can help people understand systemic issues and compel them to take action.
Why Intersectional Stories Are Key to Helping the Communities We Serve
📱 Y Combinator-backed app aims to bring mental health to all
It feels like not a single day passes without yet another mental health app hitting the market (we, of course, are thrilled to see it). However, this one, called MentalHappy, is definitely worth your attention — it launches with the goal of making mental health care accessible, affordable, and free of stigma. The team intends to do it by developing low-cost peer support groups facilitated by qualified professionals. So far its founder Tamar Blue has raised $1.1 million in seed funding from Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures. While MentalHappy started out as a workplace wellness product, Blue redeveloped it into what it is today during the time she spent in Y Combinator in the summer of 2018.
Some of the groups on the platform are completely free of charge, while the cost for participating in others starts from as low as $10 per month — the pricing is set individually by the leader of the group. The topics discussed range from Black mental health to life after divorce, some of the groups are smaller and others can have more than 100 members and function similarly to a message board with an ability to join a video meeting with the facilitator. The platform functions like a marketplace, where support leaders operate independently and therefore set a lot of their own rules. The expectation is to have over 100 support group leaders by the end of the year, leading the discussions about over 47 different types of challenges.
An app like this needs both support group facilitators and members to work, that’s why in the future the company might face a challenge of one of the biggest obstacles to mental health support accessibility: not having enough professionals to meet the demand. Right now, however, the company is focusing on onboarding the facilitators, some of whom bring their existing client bases with them to the platform. And this approach might still work better than others when seeking to provide as many people as possible with quality care — it offers a chance to avoid long waitlists that many therapists and psychologists have, and a solution for those who don’t have any type of mental health facility within a driving distance. The platform also has a strong focus on diversity working to develop support groups for people of various identities, as provider fit is critical to the success of the service. All in all, lack of access to mental health care is a topic of utmost importance. Therefore it’s great to see yet another project with the ambition of making the vision of “mental health for all” come true.
Y Combinator-backed MentalHappy app launches to make mental health care accessible
🧑💻 Improving workplace wellness with limited resources — mission possible?
The need for an overhaul of the systems and structures we rely on has become glaringly obvious to most of us during the pandemic. The social impact sector is not an exception — we need organizations to develop highly resilient, thoughtfully designed, and responsive systems so that people working in the field are able to engage with their work and thrive while also taking care of themselves. The importance of compassion for other people is frequently stressed in the social impact sector, yet the compassion for the workers themselves is sometimes overlooked. While there are more and more organizations that are willing to step up in terms of supporting employee wellbeing, many, particularly those that struggle with systemic deprivation of resources in their sector, lack the expertise and funds to do it meaningfully. Fortunately, they can learn from other organizations that face similar struggles, and improve their workplace wellness efforts by focusing on a few specific things.
To begin with, it’s essential to be intentional about an organizational desire to support team wellbeing. That includes making sure that the actions and policies align with this intention. A good place to start is evaluating the flexibility of the wellness leave and what options are there to fit the employees’ needs and consider what measures are currently in place to provide support to the workers in case their wellbeing ends up being compromised. Different staff members need different kinds of support at different times. People come to the organization with a wide spectrum of experiences from a variety of backgrounds and all of this needs to be taken into consideration when building a wellbeing-centered work environment. A few options that can be explored include subsidizing therapy, incorporating team wellbeing in your grant applications, developing a mentoring program, or creating resources for social-emotional as well as diversity and inclusion trainings.
Meaningful relationships are also fundamental to advancing wellbeing. One way to incorporate this is by reevaluating the role of a manager beyond their duties of leadership and supervision. Restructuring managerial relationships to center wellbeing might mean including some new practices or approaching the old ones with clearer intention. It’s equally important to develop systems to understand team members, allow them to comfortably share feedback, and hold space for conversations about the company’s policies, wellbeing, and employees’ needs. Besides helping to nurture a caring, supportive community within an organization, this doesn’t require an extra investment of funds, which is essential for companies with limited resources. Trying out these practices might be a good first step in building a wellbeing-focused company culture and a way to prove to themselves and others that workplace wellness is achievable for all kinds of companies, despite the funds available to them.
Gabija works as a Marketing & Communications Coordinator at Masawa. She lets her vision of a more just, sustainable, equitable world guide Masawa’s story and inform the work towards transforming global mental wellness to make it accessible and accepted.
