Masawa Minute 56
A glimpse into fathers’ mental health | Can screaming help release anger? | + More!
This is the Masawa Minute — mental wellness, social impact, and impact investing snippets from what we’ve read and created the last two weeks + where you can get active.
Welcome to the last newsletter of winter! Today, we’re discussing the mental health of families and their individual members, with an emphasis on a very important yet rarely discussed topic of paternal mental health. We hope you learn something new!
Masawa Thoughts
Did you know that 50% of all lifetime mental illness begins before age 14? This is a profoundly disturbing number, one that shines a spotlight on this newsletter’s focus on parental mental health. If we want to take a system’s approach to addressing mental wellness, we have to look at interrupting intergenerational trauma by focusing on parents. The need is huge and the number of impactful opportunities is on the rise!
Over in Masawa world, we’re finishing up a great investment and are really excited about upcoming opportunities to accompany exciting founders on their journeys to catalyze mental wellness. Our Nurture Capital approach is attracting more interest from funds, family offices, and foundations, alike!
Startup Spotlight
Dadditude is an awesome self-care coaching and community app aiming to support men that are on their fatherhood journeys. It offers self-care and parenting advice produced by therapists, researchers and parenting organizations, in addition to a number of science-backed guides on a variety of relevant topics. It also provides fathers with a safe space to connect to other dads and share their experiences, as well as on-demand expert support for when some extra assistance is needed. And that’s only the beginning — we’re thrilled to see what comes next!
Attend
Mental Health For All: The Effects of Conversion Therapy on the LGBTQIA+ Community
The latest webinar in United for Global Mental Health’s webinar series Mental Health for All is one dedicated to exploring the painful issue of conversion therapy and what steps can be taken to combat this practice on a global scale. The webinar will take place on February 22nd, 3 pm CET.
Mental Health for All webinar series is designed to help inform policymakers and the global mental health community of deeper, often neglected issues related to the mental health of communities all around the world. The webinars aim to provide practical solutions and explore ways to advocate for lasting change.
This Week’s Story
Fathers’ mental health: why this overlooked topic matters
How much do we know about paternal mental health? Most of the time, the answer is not enough. While becoming a parent is considered to be one of the most significant and joyful experiences of someone’s life, this period can also be marked by anxiety, low mood and depression. Thankfully, awareness of those challenges in young mothers’ experiences has increased significantly over the last few years. Yet we are only now learning that the rates of postpartum depression are nearly equal in mothers and fathers, something that isn’t usually discussed when it comes to the mental wellbeing of new parents.
Evidence is surfacing that becoming a father actually is connected to significant biological effects, like fluctuations in hormone levels and even changes in the brain structure. Next to that, the risk factors for male postpartum depression include an array of social factors like lack of social support or struggle with forming an attachment to their child. It’s important that this is recognized in the support services oriented towards new parents and that more open dialogue is taking place between fathers of both younger and older children. Hopefully, this could be a step towards a future where parenthood is treated as an equally intense and challenging period for both parents and they can receive the support they need.
Postnatal depression in dads: The science underlining this overlooked condition
What else we’re reading…
🍼 While it’s clear that we need to pay more attention to paternal mental health, that doesn’t mean any of it should be taken away from the mothers’ wellbeing. On the contrary — after two years of global pandemic during which mothers often had to bear a lot of responsibility with little support, recognizing and treating postnatal mental health disorders in women is more important than ever.
📱 Mantra Health, a digital mental health platform offering support to young adults, has just secured $22 million in a Series A funding round. The company hopes to improve the mental wellbeing of over 20 million university and college students across the US and to support their both short-term and long-term treatment needs through its digital offerings.
💃🏼 Many mothers around the world are at their breaking points, often without a safe space to express their anger and frustration. That’s why across the US they are getting together to scream and learn to process their emotions in healthy ways.
🪁 We’ve experienced languishing, we tried to counter it with rest and self-care, but we’re still feeling stuck. Now what? It’s time to try behavioral activation. It can help us tackle low mood, apathy, and summon the motivation to tackle whatever is going on in our lives when we need it the most.
🌳 Ecotherapy, or nature therapy, is a term describing a variety of ways in which therapists might include nature in their clients’ treatment plans. While it’s certainly beneficial to everyone, it’s a particularly great tool that parents can use to help their children focus and de-stress. It’s also been found to boost children’s empathy and confidence levels as well as improve their mindfulness skills!
Gabija works as a 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.
