Why we want to create a Mental Health Newsletter
I wrote this back in October when we initially came up with the idea, thinking about what Grounded could be and excited to get it out there to people.
Everything still holds true… reach out if the idea resonates.
I’m going to outline what Grounded is and why I believe it’s such an exciting concept — something that’ll be a real force for good and as a result, can have a lot of potential.
I think it’s best to start off with how the idea came about.
Humble Origins
This whole concept came about from an article I (Luke) sent a good friend of many years (Joe) about my first ever therapy session, as a means of reflecting on what was discussed during that hour.
I sent the article to a few close friends whose opinions I really respect, and whose I thought would resonate with the upfront and honest discussion about my own mentality — getting both advice on sentence structure as well as reassurance that I wasn’t coming off as a bumbling mess.
The feedback was better than I expected, from the sounds of it a lot of people found the article insightful and helped them resonate with the own way they’ve been feeling and thinking. I was incredibly excited to publish it, but couldn’t answer where the hell should I even post this thing.
It’s written on Medium so I could always just publish it there, but it hasn’t really got a following beyond the people I’ve already sent it to — so what’s the point? I could share it on LinkedIn and Instagram but that feels a bit strange, none of those places feel right for a random article I wrote about mental health — moving forwards would I just occasionally share articles on my story in isolated chunks?
I was planning on doing the above until Joe came up with the idea to solve this problem, what I’ve arbitrarily called Grounded.
So what actually is it?
Great question! To be honest I don’t think any of us are actually sure at this point. Here’s what we ideated for the super long-term:
It’s a dedicated space for all discussion around mental health for students and young professionals. With articles, interviews with thought leaders and forums of discussion, we could foster an understanding of mental health that isn’t necessarily tied to a diagnosis. It’s a space that isn’t used to appease stress when you’re struggling but a place where you can listen to the stories of people and reflect on your own thought processes — something easily digestible that you’d read on your daily commute.
That’s a big thing to build, requiring an active community, a large number of writers (and programmers) and enough traction to get some actual sway in the wider community. While I definitely think there’s space for this and it can get there, there’s a lot of ways we can quickly test this idea out to see if anyone actually cares.
Let’s Make it simple
Without a forum, interviews or a dedicated website we still have a unique perspective that we’re providing. For me it’s this:
We’re helping people understand their own mentality through the personal experiences of others.
I think this is something that’s truly lacking in any meaningful way. As someone whose mind works by imagining hypothetical events and conversations, I find this personal approach promotes analysis of the effects of anxiety, depression or any other topics that we’d touch on better than anything explaining a diagnosis.
One thing that I think is important is that these aren’t cries for help. While the topics can be personal, vulnerable and generally somewhat negative, the vibe would be quite cathartic, leading to the reader taking their own relaxed look at how they think. I think a key part of that is for us all to understand the strength in our vulnerability — this is a support network in a non-intrusive way, rather than telling you what you need to do to fundamentally be happy with yourself we instead promote the self-discovery that, in my opinion, leads to actual growth and long-term contentment with our own strengths and flaws.
Furthermore, I think the topics can be wider than just chats about how we think, if there’s something on brand that is helpful I’m incredibly keen to get it in. Examples of articles I’ve got written up already that fit would be
- People spending all exam-period in the library and how I think my results personally improved because I actively didn’t do that
- The way I journal and the beneficial effects of it
Enough tangential fluff. We can really easily test out if people like this idea by getting a few people together, writing an article each, and then posting it as some sort of newsletter (the form that’ll come as would definitely need to be explored because no one reads emails). If we received positive feedback we could do something like this on a regular basis, and working out the exact structure could just be a trial and error gig. If the growth were to steadily continue then we could actually try to make this some sort of business.
Where you come in
If you’re still reading and like the idea, we’d love to have you involved! As someone with absolutely zero experience managing publications, there’s a lot of space here to make a mark and get heavily involved.
I’m imagining you know someone who’s part of the team (because real talk how did you hear about this otherwise) so I would recommend you reach out to them to have a quick chat about the idea. If that isn’t the case (or even if it is) don’t hesitate to reach out to me personally, more than happy to have a more detailed discussion on the topic and listen to any thoughts you have — the name’s Luke Yianni and I’m sure you can find me without too much difficulty.
